


like dampness brings out frogs and snails

by mysticalmuddle



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Humor, Mystery, R Plus L Equals J, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-02-25 04:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 39,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21970186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysticalmuddle/pseuds/mysticalmuddle
Summary: A year and a half after the Great War and with one successful exorcism under their belts, married couple Arya and Jon Snow are summoned to return to their childhood home for the Year's End celebration. But not all is as it seems in Winterfell's great halls and the duo are forced to grapple with an uncomfortable new paranormal mystery: who is the lady ghost haunting their goodsister Jeyne Westerling, and what will it take to banish the foul ghoul?Along the way, the couple must also contend with a discontented Catelyn Stark, who remains in the dark about their wartime marriage, the peculiar afflictions that struck the couple down in Essos, a temperamental flaming sword, a ghost-mad younger brother, and a host of enormous and ill behaved dogs.With the help of their valet and lady's maid, Arya and Jon must solve the mystery of the Lady in Blue before the new year begins and Lady Jeyne is driven mad.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Arya Stark
Comments: 91
Kudos: 117





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas—something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails."--Told After Supper, Jerome K. Jerome

Pia brought the mail in just after noon, along with a tray of tea things and enough sandwiches to feed an army. I was perched on a chair at the little desk in the parlor trying to finish off a letter to Brienne, biting industriously at the end of my pen when she cleared her throat meaningfully and announced, “Lunch, my lady.”

“In a moment,” I said around the pen. “Jon, darling, does it sound better to take the train down or the car? Brienne needs to know by the end of the week or else she says Jaime is going to hare off and come get us.”

My better half was attempting to be industrious himself, brushing out Ghost’s coat but mostly managing to wrestle the poor beast across the rug. “All three are delightful concepts,” he said and chucked the brush aside. “Tell her we’ll take the train and he can meet us at the station, preferably in a car. Will that satisfy?”

“Idiot,” I said fondly and scribbled another line. “He’s hardly going to parade out his best horses and make us ride.”

“There’s always a chance,” Jon said and stretched with a creaking groan. “The only sensible thing the man’s ever done is marry Brienne. Off with you,” he told Ghost, who whisked himself from the room in a small blizzard of white hair.

“Cold ham and mustard, my lady,” Pia said again, patiently. 

To be frank, I wasn’t particularly hungry but swept aside my little sheaf of papers to avoid the fussing. “Have at it, then,” I said, capping the pen. 

She lay the tray out and began pouring out tea. I’d never seen Pia spill a drop of the stuff and it was always the perfect temperature--hot enough to drink without quite scalding your mouth. It was some kind of magic, I was convinced, but queries into the matter had been deftly deflected.

“What’s this?” I asked, picking a little white envelope up from its precarious tilt against my teacup.

“The mail, my lady,” Pia said. “Perhaps a sandwich first, before you open it?”

There was no use arguing with her. I let her give me a plate and cup and left Jon to deal with the rest of the tray. My head had been aching all morning and it was a relief to take my things and lay out across the sofa with them near at hand.

Jon, dear man that he was, tucked my feet into his lap the moment he joined me. Before he could ask the dreaded question, I told him, “Yes, I’m feeling well enough. But has your own handwriting ever given you a headache? I find I can hardly stand mine now.”

He laughed. “No, dearheart,” he assured me. “I paid far more attention to my studies and can manage a fair enough hand.” Around a bite of his sandwich, spilling crumbs across my stockings, he asked, “Shall I finish off your letter? Only tell me what to write and I promise not to embellish a whit.”

It was an attractive concept. I was greatly looking forward to visiting Casterly Rock, especially considering we were planned to only just escape the first real winter snowstorms, but letter writing was hardly my forte. Everything important I had to tell Brienne was better said in person, and everything unimportant was hardly worth the price of the postage.

“Mayhap,” I said and threw an arm over my eyes. “Pass me my letter and I’ll decide after I read it.”

The letter was forthcoming. He even took a moment to rip the envelope down the side so I wouldn’t have to fuss with the flap of it. 

_Dear Arya,_ it began and skipped right over any pleasantries to state, _I am writing to cordially invite you to Winterfell this year to celebrate Seven Nights and Year’s End with your family._

“Oh Gods,” I said in a groan. “It’s Mother. She wants us to come for the holidays.”

“Read it out loud then,” Jon said and rubbed my leg comfortingly. “We might as well share the misery.”

“It has been far too many years since we last all gathered together,” I read out. “Your brother Robb and his lovely wife have agreed to act as hosts this year, as per tradition, and he is most looking forward to introducing you to Lady Jeyne Westerling-Stark. Sansa is also bringing her fiance and Rickon and Bran are returned from their schools for the year’s end break. All I need now is the presence of my lovely daughter to make my Seven Nights complete.

“And I am not the only one who feels so. Sweet Rickon is most insistent that you return and both Bran and Robb have chorused how unfair it is that Sansa has visited with you but not they.

“Please write as quickly as you’re able with your acceptance and I will arrange travel for you. Any assistance you need is more than welcome as well, or we will hire a night nurse for you from the village. All my love, your doting mother, Catelyn Stark.”

“Well,” Jon said after a moment, “she certainly didn’t bother to beat around the bush with that.”

I dropped the letter on my lap and threw my arm back across my eyes. “I’ll write and tell her I am still far too fragile for the cold,” I announced. “No, better, _you_ may write back and tell her I am too ill and you are taking me to the seaside for the air. Gods be willing, she will be too enraged to write back and harass us any further.”

“Gladly,” Jon said with a sigh and I felt him pick the letter up. “Sansa’s wedding is soon enough for me to see Aunt Catelyn, though I will admit the thought of seeing little baby Rickon is tempting.”

“How many years has it been?” I asked. “Gods, I cannot remember.” 

“Since before the war, at least,” Jon said and the paper rustled.

“We should invite him to spend his midyear holiday with us,” I told him. “We will go somewhere fantastical and warm and spoil him thoroughly. Not,” I added preemptively, “Dorne. I am still far too ill at the thought of Dorne to spend any more time there.”

“Aye,” Jon said but absentmindedly. I threw my arm off again and sat up to poke him with my foot.

He caught my ankle, holding it still, and finished reading the letter. “What?” I demanded. “Did she enclose some secret message for you?”

“Hardly,” he told me, “but you missed the postscript, dearheart.” He held out the paper again and I could see clearly that someone had written across the blank back.

I took it and read with some alarm the strong hand. _Jon,_ the post script read, _I hope this letter finds you and Arya both in good spirits and good health. The sentiment written within is true for me as well and I wish only to add that I would be more than pleased if both of you came home this year. If not, please write back and we will arrange a more favorable time for you both to visit. All my love and prayers, your Uncle Ned._

“Oh Gods,” I groaned again and tossed the letter aside. Father never, ever asked us to come North.

“We’ll have to go,” Jon said after a moment. I knew he didn’t dare deny one of Father’s few requests and I found I didn’t have the heart too, either.

“Have Peck call ahead and find a room in the village,” I said with a sigh. “I’ll send Pia out to buy some warmer clothes.” Winter was barely creeping in--everyone predicted it would be a long one, two years at least--but all my current winter clothes wouldn’t stand up to even the slightest Northern breeze.

“If your healthy truly is too fragile--” Jon started with a worried edge but I cut him off irritably.

“My lungs have hardly transformed into cheesecloth,” I snapped. “And I promise you shall be the very first to know if they do. No, Pia will buy me some warmer clothes and I expect her to bundle me in them thoroughly. I shall be fine.”

Jon didn’t look happy about it but he hardly ever did when the subject came up. I prodded him with my foot again and this time he let me. “I promise that if I get sick we shall make our excuses and leave for the Rock as we planned before. Jaime and Brienne would hardly grudge us changing our minds two or three times.”

“Aye, alright,” Jon said and bent to kiss my ankle. 

My head was throbbing terribly now. The tea didn’t help much and I knew any more lunch was a wash. I’d give my sandwich to Nymeria, I decided, and lay back down. 

“You may write to all of them, if you don’t mind too much,” I told Jon. “I think a nap is in order.”

Sweet as he was, the dear man brought me a blanket and another pillow before he resigned himself to the desk and my much chewed pen.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time the train chugged merrily past the Twins, I knew better what kind of trouble we were in. There was no point looking out the windows--they had frosted over completely--and I huddled bitterly under my coat and Jon’s.

He, the horrible prat, was stretched out on his seat in his shirtsleeves and completely comfortable with the state of matters. Periodically he would turn the page of his book, no doubt some historical tome that would put any sane person right to sleep.

Briefly, I considered him asking to read aloud and letting myself take advantage of the soporific, but the thought of freezing to death on the blasted train made me persevere, grimly awake.

“More tea, my lady?” Pia asked. I shook my head and buried my face into my arm, gulping down a cough. She gave me a knowing look, but didn’t dare say anything with Jon sitting right there. I knew full well that there would be doses of medicine the moment we reached Wintertown, but until then she could hardly whip out her carpet bag and force something nasty down my throat.

The agreement had been, after all, that I would _try_ , and no Stark worth a whit was going to be defeated by winter at the Twins. I was manifestly determined to not cough myself to death until we were in the North proper.

“Some fool down the car has opened his window,” Peck announced cheerfully as he came back into our compartment, pulling his white gloves back on. “Shall I go and set him straight?”

“If it’s the man smoking a cigar, leave him be,” I said bitterly. “I would rather freeze to death than asphyxiate.”

Jon looked up with alarm, but I waved him away and rested my head back against the seat. I had a strong suspicion that it wasn’t just the cold air bringing me low and I would rather save all his fussing for my actually being sick, when Pia could drug me into unconsciousness.

But Jon put down his book and stood up. “I’ll have a word with him,” he said, with just a hint of menace in his voice, and shut the compartment door firmly closed behind himself. To spare us from the yelling, I assume.

“You look peaked, my lady,” Pia said the moment he was gone. “If the air is too cold--”

“I’m fine,” I said and burrowed into my coats again. “How are my children, Peck?”

“They have yet to destroy anything, my lady,” he said cheerfully. “The conductor is most pleased.”

My beautiful dogs had been exiled to the luggage car for bad behavior and overcrowding, as the ticket man had bellowed at us on his third time past and his third time tripping over them. I stand by that it was hardly their fault and the man should have been more careful but Peck had taken them away readily enough and was now taking ample opportunities to go and check on them, likely relishing his freedom from the bouncing rattling seats and my own poor mood.

“Wonderful,” I said. “We might manage the trip without being kicked off this dastardly train yet.”

The compartment door opened and slammed shut again. Jon was pushing his hair off his face--red, he _had_ been yelling--and said, “Switch with Arya, would you, Peck?”

There was an obliging shuffling about, which I was not consulted about, but I found I couldn’t complain too much. Jon tucked me up snugly against him and he was truly ridiculously warm.

“You’ll have to put your coat back on when we reach the station,” I said and burrowed into his side. Peck and Pia could hardly care about my manners and decorum at this point. “Father might get a bit suspicious that you’re wandering around a blizzard in your shirtsleeves.”

Jon’s own peculiar affliction left him with a high temperature, while mine tended to leave me skewing more towards whatever the ambient air was at. I was more than happy to take advantage of his continually discarded coats and jackets but I was also of the opinion that the less questions Father asked him, the better.

“You had better rest,” he told me instead of answering. 

“Yes, yes, I know,” I replied, irritated and burrowed further into his side. “I must be ready at a moment’s notice to do battle with Mother.”

Jon snorted but put his arm around me heavily before he turned back to his book. I shut my eyes, listening to him turn the pages, cold and bored beyond belief. I’d slept through thorough shellings during the war but escaping the rattle of the damn train was beyond me.

After a moment casting about, I said, “Peck, I don’t believe you’ve ever met my mother.”

“No, m’lady,” Peck said with some amusement.

“”She is very kind and gracious,” I said. “You shall dislike her immediately and I believe she will return the favor. We must hope that Pia manages to escape her wrath or we’ll all be on the outs with no recourse.”

Peck muffled a snort of laughter and I stretched an eye open to appraise him. “You think it’s funny now,” I warned, “but all the downstairs is under her fist at any moment. Prepare yourself for grungy sheets, cold rooms, overly salted dinners, and poor dispositions.”

“I’ll gird my loins, m’lady,” he said.

Jon sighed into my hair and told him, “You had better. She thinks poorly of me and it’s bound to reflect back onto you though you’re a perfectly fine valet.”

This absolute understatement made me laugh into his side. Jon tugged a lock of my hair to silence me and went on. “Truly, Peck, don’t let her sourness have any bearing on your actions. Nothing you do will improve it.”

“I’m touched, sir,” Peck said with a grin. “You think so highly of me. But I’m certain the lady of the keep and I will get along well enough.”

“Yes,” Pia agreed placidly, “vis-a-vis thorough avoidance. She can’t scorn Peck if she doesn’t know he’s there.”

“And poor Pia,” I said, unable to help it. “She’ll insist on a chaperone, whatever good that’ll do, and I can already imagine the myriad of reasons Pia won’t suit.”

“Is it because I already let you live in sin, m’lady?” Pia asked, clicking away industriously at her knitting needles. Her even, calm tone didn’t even hint to the fact that she had been the one to guide my hand on the wedding registry. 

“Undoubtedly,” I said with unfeigned moroseness. There was a reason we had planned to take rooms in Wintertown and it was because I couldn’t possibly stand both the cold and Mother’s frigid disapproval.

The train was slowing now and rattling to an agonizingly slow stop. Jon braced a hand against my stomach to keep me from rolling off the seat and turned another page. 

“Graywater Watch,” I muttered. “It’s not too late to get off here and spend Year’s End with the Reeds.”

“I agreed to dig the dogs out of snow banks,” Jon said, “not huge puddles of frozen mud. We’re going to Winterfell, dearheart.”

“Fine,” I said dramatically, “but you can’t make me enjoy it.”


	3. Chapter 3

The Wintertown train station was nearly empty and I wasn’t at all surprised. The biting wind was enough to keep even the strongest man indoors and I was thoroughly looking forward to a bath, a hot fire, and a bed with as many blankets as I could weasel out of the innkeeper.

Pia and I stood huddled on the covered station steps while Jon and Peck argued with the miserable looking men at the taxi stand. 

“My lady,” Pia said after a moment with disgusted awe, “those snow drifts are taller than my head.”

“Aye,” I said, “and they’re only going to get taller yet. D’you know, they still use horses to plow the roads because the cars can’t manage it?”

Pia’s look of great horror was a thing to relish. “I thought it snowed in Harrenhal,” I said casually. “Really, Pia, one could think you were from Dorne.”

“There’s snow and then there’s snow, m’lady,” she said grimly and dug about in her bag for another pair of gloves.

I understood the sentiment exactly. Jon hadn’t tried to take his coat back and at this point I was considering not making him. Let the wind try and cut through two layers of wool, a layer of down, and several layers of silk and cotton and see where that got it.

One of the cabbies was waving his arms and yelling hoarsely, pointing at the dogs and yelling again. My beautiful babies were bouncing through the snow banks piled at the edges of the paved station lot, panting and in Nymeria’s case, baying with excitement.

“Oh gods,” Pia said. “They’re not going to take the dogs.”

“Do you think,” I wondered, burrowed into the collar of the top coat to contain my periodic coughs, “that if I told them to go home, they’d run back off to Winterfell?”

“For shame!” Jon told me, trudging back through the building snow. “Abandoning your children like that, and at Year’s End no less!”

“Dogs of their, ah, breed, do very well in the snow,” I told him sourly. “I, however, do not. I want a bath, Jon, and sometimes sacrifices must be made.”

“Not this time,” he said and cupped the back of my head to bring me into a kiss. 

I wasn’t having it, and ducked away.

“Aye, fine,” Jon said, resigned but cheerful. “They’ll take us and the dogs and the luggage and it’ll only cost me nearly a year’s wages.”

“I’ve seen your idea of a year’s wages,” I told him, thoroughly unimpressed. The army was paid a pittance, and that was even before they’d suddenly had to come up with back pay and wages for a war’s worth of widows. 

“So sour,” Jon teased. “You didn’t seem to mind the thought in Braavos but I suppose General Mormont is right, and you did only marry me for the money.”

Peck was getting to work hauling the luggage to the cars. “My dastardly plans exposed,” I said and let Jon kiss me--but only because he was very warm and I could hardly feel my face anymore.

But I drew the line at letting him put his hand on my neck, perilously exposing the back of it to the cold. “Go help Peck!” I yelped and drew away. 

“Alright,” he said cheerfully and tucked a strand of hair back behind my ear. “We’ll have you warm soon enough.”

“Ha,” I said because I knew exactly what he thought that would entail and I highly doubted his vision involved a glorious stack of down quilts and at least three warm bricks for my feet.

Pia was giving him a gimlet eye, too, and he decided--sensibly--that the better part of valor would be to give a hand hauling the luggage.

While we waited, listening to the faint curses floating through the air, I contemplated the landscape. It was intimately familiar and still what I thought of when I thought about the idea of _home_ , but I hadn’t been to the North in nearly six years and the mind had forgotten some of what the heart still knew.

The trees were so dense and furiously thick, the icy drifts so tall and majestic, the snow muffling the sounds in the air so absolutely. It was brutal and horrible and _perfect_. I wanted to express the thought to Pia but she was so unromantic a soul that I knew it would fall flat.

So I went and wrestled collars onto the dogs instead, whistling them out of the snow and fighting to reach the buckles through four inches of the thickest fur known to men.

“I ought to have you for gloves and a coat,” I told Nymeria as I pushed her enormous head of my armpit for the fourth time. “You stay still and be good and I shall let you eat as much taxi upholstery as you like.”

She panted foully into my face. “Gloves,” I told her. “And your horrible beast of a brother will make such a beautiful bedspread.”

Ghost raised his head, mouth dripping half-melted snow he had frantically started wolfing down, and stared happily. His tail whisked briskly, sending ice crystals flying in all directions.

“You leave my horrible beast be,” Jon said and put his arm about me. “I’ve reserved rights to his magnificent plumage.”

I’ll admit, I jumped perhaps two feet into the hair and said fiercely, “Don’t do that, stupid!”

And then, grudgingly, “Ha, feathers.”

“Aye,” Jon said. “I thought you’d like that.” He brushed snow off my shoulders and asked, “Are you done rolling through the banks, dearheart? We’re all set to leave.”

We piled into the first cab with the luggage and Pia decamped into the front seat of the second to spare her dress, while Peck clambered into the back to keep the dogs from going out the window from sheer joy of being in a car. 

Well, _out_. Perhaps _through_ would be more accurate.

“To the keep then?” the cabby asked, tugging at his hat. “M’lord?”

“To the inn,” Jon said with some irritation.

“Aye, alright,” the cabby said. “Only, it’s just, his lordship said, ah, to bring you all to the keep and he’d pay double the going rate.”

Jon ground his teeth. _Fathers_ , I thought irritably, and said, “My friend, we are already paying you and your companion far more than the going rate to transport my horrible beast and my dogs to our destination. If you don’t wish to take us to the inn, we will simply get out, brave the damn cold, and walk.”

“I am,” Jon added with menace, “already _well versed_ in marching. I don't intend to do any more.” 

“Aye, aye!” the cabby said with some small alarm. “The inn, alright! It’s no problem, m’lord.”

He turned the engine on and pulled out onto the road. I was gratified to see his fellow following. I could only imagine the kind of trouble that would happen if they showed up to Winterfell _sans_ the master and mistress.

Mother couldn’t stop us from taking up a room in absolute (perceived) sin if she didn’t even know we were there.

Under the edge of my second coat--Jon was still in shirtsleeves and I decided he could stay that way--he pinched my leg. I knew exactly what for, but batted his hand away.

His look was amused and far more expectant that I was happy with, but that was a problem for the inn.

Wintertown unfolded around us as the car progressed, sprawling out bigger than I remembered. Some of the stores of my childhood were gone, I was sad to see--the pharmacy we used to get dragged to when sick, the place Mother bought our clothes when she couldn’t have them made, the little butcher shop where they’d relented to my endless questions and taken me behind the counter to see exactly _how_ they made a pig stop fitting together in a neat package.

“Everything’s different,” I said in a murmur. 

Jon, perhaps, had less expectations that Winterfell would still remain the eternal childhood pile, but petted at my hair comfortingly, saying nothing. I leant my head against his shoulder and shut my eyes, not feeling prepared to notice anything more.

I was drowsing, half asleep, when the cab came to a gentle stop. “We’re here, m’lord,” the cabby said. 

The Smoking Log was a picture out of my memory, unchanged by time and war. The sign, still filthy and half peeled away, hung at its normal crooked angle and the door boasted the same hideous wolf knocker.

“Do you remember when Sansa told me the knocker would come alive and eat my fingers if I touched it?” I said fondly as Jon helped me out of the car.

He looked surprised, then nodded, laughing. “I do!” he said. “You hid half under the post box and cried for nearly an hour.”

The second cab was pulling up, the cabby grim. Nymeria was baying like a hound out of one of the seven hells and Peck sprung the door open straight away to let the poor dear out. 

“Come here, darling,” I cooed and brushed a piece of ice out of her fur. “Oh, you poor thing. You wanted to run the whole way, didn’t you…”

She had not, I was pleased to see, eaten any of the seats and Ghost had behaved himself similarly well. But the cabby, looking furious, had barely waited for Peck to help Pia out and peel out a few bills for him before he slammed on the gas and took off careening down the street.

“Surely they weren’t that bad,” Jon said as he set one of the suitcases on the sidewalk.

“Ghost decided to lick the poor man’s head,” Pia said with resignation. “I believe he felt the next logical step would be Ghost _biting_ his head and thusly desired to take evasive maneuvers.”

“He must have liked him,” I said and stroked Ghost’s head between his ears. “Ghost hardly does that to just anybody.”

Our cabby gave Ghost a nervous look as he stepped past with another suitcase.

“Mayhap you should go inside,” Jon said and tweaked my chin. “You look half ready to fall over.”

He was hardly going to let me haul my own suitcase around so I resigned myself to standing inside with a warm fire and Pia’s fine company. “I shall introduce you to the innkeeper,” I told Pia. “I have known him since I was small.”

The inside was just the same as the outside--slightly grubby in a familiar, comforting way and I led Pia easily through the empty clusters of tables and chairs to the bar where a man with a scraggling grey beard and more eyebrows than eyes was wiping at a glass.

“Royce Snow!” I cried happily. 

He looked up and his wrinkled face changed at once into a craggy smile. “Why it cannot be!” he shouted. “Little Arya Underfoot!”

Pia said in an amused tone, “ _Underfoot_ ,” but before I had time to fire anything back, Royce had come around the bar to embrace me.

He was gentle, for which I was grateful. The cold hadn’t quite turned my lungs into the promised cheesecloth but any more jostling and I was sure I’d spend the night coughing discreetly into my hands.

“Arya Stark, back in the North at last!” he said as he held me at arms length and looked me over. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Aye,” said Jon from the doorway as he hauled in a bag. “And me as well, though I’m hardly half so good a prize.”

Royce gaped and shoved his way across the room to embrace Jon too. “Jon Snow!” he bellowed happily. “You’ve come back for Year’s End, then.”

“Just so,” I said and settled myself onto one of the bar stools. “Are there rooms still, Royce? We’ve come up from Pinkmaiden and could sorely use a rest.”

“We have rooms aplenty,” Jeyne Snow said, coming out of the kitchen behind the bar. “If my husband hasn’t shouted the roof down into them.”

She was already smiling to see me and kissed my cheek happily. “You’re too thin, girl,” she said and pinched my cheek with gentle fingers. “You need some feeding up.”

“And you, Jon Snow,” Jeyne went on, looking over at him. “You come here and give us a hug.”

He did so happily. “You look well enough,” Jeyne told him. “But too thin, the both of you. Why I remember when you were this high, Jon, and I couldn’t hardly keep you out of the pies for love or money.”

Jon laughed easily, a bright and happy bark. “I’ll keep my fingers to myself this time, Mistress Snow,” he said. 

“You had better!” she chided him and smacked at his chest. “Gods be good, boy, where’s your coat gotten to?”

“Arya has it,” Jon said shamelessly. “The cold isn’t very good for her now.”

And there it was--his compulsive urge to hide behind my hospital gown to escape bossy women and their judgement. “You’re a wretch,” I said irritably as Jeyne turned back to me.

“Not good for--” she said and then her whole face changed. “Oh, girl, I had forgotten. We heard, you know, when the telegram came.” And she took me up in her arms, the same tight and reassuring hug she’d given me when I was a frightened child or an unhappy child or a grumpy child.

Something in the six-year-old hindbrain that hung around my older memories relented. I knew at once that I could tell Jeyne that the war had been a horrible and scary thing and she would comfort me just as she had comforted me about her evil door knocker.

Perhaps, I thought with only a small amount of grudge, coming North hadn’t been so bad an idea after all.

“None of that now,” Royce demanded as he shut the door behind Peck and the last of the luggage. “You’ll have me blubbering and that ain’t such a pretty sight these days.”

“Aye, alright,” Jeyne said. “Now, you sit yourselves down, the four of you, and we’ll see about warm rooms for your whole lot.”

“Two should do it, Mistress,” Peck said cheerfully and peeled off his gloves to shake Royce’s hand. “Josmyn Peckledon, at your service, and the fine woman at the fire’s my wife, Pia.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Royce said and shook his hand. “Two rooms, aye? One for you and the mistress, and one for whoever ain’t going on to the keep?”

Ah, the eternally awkward question. “One for my man and woman, and one for myself and Jon,” I corrected him cheerfully. “We shan’t be staying at the keep, for obvious reasons.”

Royce’s considerable eyebrows rose towards his hairline with alarming speed. “My lady,” he began, no doubt to start a rounding scold, but Jeyne was almost immediately lapsed into a fit of laughter.

“Oh gods!” she cried and wiped at her eyes. “Have you finally managed to make her give up her wild ways, Jon Snow?”

Now, I’ll admit, that stung a little. “Mistress,” I said with great dignity, “I wasn’t that _wild_.”

But Jon was laughing too, as he came over and put his arm around me. It took away some of the sting to be able to lean against him. “She’s taken me up,” he said easily. “It took much convincing, but I managed it at last.”

“Oh, I’m glad,” Jeyne said and laughed again. 

Even Royce had to relent in the face of such overwhelmingly sappy love. “You two always were such damn peas in a pod,” he said and shook his head. “Two rooms then and gods help us all when your poor mother finds out, m’lady.”


	4. Chapter 4

When Pia threw back the old fashioned wooden shutters and let the morning sun into the room, I didn’t even have to loosen my arms from the twenty quilts and sheets and blankets they were trapped under to cover my face. Jon simply hooked an arm around my waist and rolled us both over back into the narrow strip of darkness left.

“It’s nearly ten o’clock, m’lady,” Pia said with a disapproving tone. “I think you’d best be getting up.”

My response wasn’t fit for polite company but Pia refused to be put off. “Up!” she said and yanked open the second set of shutters. “The both of you! It’s a disgrace to such a fine morning to lay about so late.”

“I pay you far too much money to be treated like this,” Jon muttered into my hair. “But I will gladly pay you even more if you simply _go away_.”

“There’s a man downstairs to see you, m’lady,” Pia went on loudly. “And you had better resign yourself to being dressed or I shall march you downstairs in your pyjamas.” 

It was the exact same tone Old Nan had taken when I was playing silly buggers. The old hindbrain was powerless against it and I started untangling myself from the sheets and my husband with a sigh.

“Peck,” Jon groaned, pulling a pillow over his face, “coffee, if you want to be merciful.”

“Death, if you want to be merciful,” I said and rolled onto the floor with a crash.

“Up, up!” Pia said, and worked me to my feet and into the bathroom. When I left to give Jon his turn, I was similarly shepherded behind the dressing screen. 

“A dress today, m’lady,” Pia said, having already laid out my limited sartorial choice--in essence--whatever she shoved over my head with the minimal amount of resisting on my part.

Normally I would have delighted at the thought of showing up in a very modern pair of trousers, but with a dress, I could have multiple layers over my legs. It was no contest at all.

“Have at it, then,” I said and raised my arms obligingly for the shift.

Peck came into the room with the wonderful sound of rattling mugs on a tray. “Pour me one, darling,” I told Jon as Pia laced me into something. “And I’ll fix the buttons on your shirt.”

There was a pause, and Jon said, “Damn it! How is it you always know?”

“Because you always misbutton them,” I said and relented to the third petticoat. “It’s hardly a guess.”

“If m’lord would just allow me--” Peck tried, as he tried every day.

“At nearly six and twenty I am well versed in how to dress myself,” Jon said sourly. “It’s very liberating, I will add and I am much determined to retain the habit now that I’ve acquired it.” His tone lightened as he went on. “Perhaps, if I continue, Arya will one day be inspired to attempt the same.”

“Yes,” I said back with a roll of my eyes. “When all I have to do to appear respectable is struggle into a shirt and trousers I shall be most delighted to do the same.”

Pia had moved onto my hair, braiding it back with neat fingers. “Nearly done,” she said cheerfully. “After, I shall administer your medicine and you may proceed down to breakfast and your guest.”

Several foul doses later, I squinted at a new bottle. I knew it was new because the label hadn’t been worn off with constant handling and rattling in that dratted bag. “What’s that for?” I asked with great suspicion.

“The doctor advised using it when in cold air, m’lady,” Pia said, dosing it onto a spoon.

“I don’t remember seeing the doctor at Pinkmaiden,” I said, suspicions mounting further. It was going to be the nastiest of the lot, I knew at once.

“I saw him on your behalf,” Pia said firmly. “Drink that up, m’lady.”

Her look plainly said, _Or else_. I took the spoon with trepidation and managed through great self control not to retch.

“It can’t be that bad, dearheart,” Jon said, powering through his second cup of coffee.

“Says you,” I managed to choke out, and resolved to not fix his (still!) misbuttoned shirt.

Finally we were declared presentable and allowed downstairs. Pia and Peck had already eaten and stayed behind to do servant things--pick up the room, kiss aggressively in their relative privacy, mock us--that sort of thing, so I was at least allowed the dignity of them not hearing the noise I made when Father stood up from the bar and held his arms out to me.

Eventually I had to stop weeping or else choke. I tore myself away from him and threw myself onto a stool to let Jon have his turn and attempted thoroughly to comport myself in a more sophisticated manner.

There were scarcely more men in the room than when we had arrived, but the man I was sharing the bar with offered me his handkerchief with a look of great alarm. 

I took it with relief and mopped at my eyes. Father and Jon were clinging together like two men on a life raft and it brought further tears to my eyes. Jon was still his favorite, oh yes, and I felt a small stirring of guilt that it was for my sake we had stayed away so long.

“You both look well,” Father said roughly and clapped Jon’s shoulder firmly. “The travel has done you good.”

“Aye,” Jon said and stepped back to rub at his own damp eyes. “Arya is much recovered, and I will admit, I feel the same.”

I finished choking down the last of my untidy emotions and said, “It’s good to see you, Father. I know that last time we met, I couldn’t quite manage it.”

He looked like he wanted to laugh, but also a little like he was horrified I would joke about it. “Aye,” he said and put a rough hand on my head. “My girl.”

And thus the status quo was restored and we could continue, as Northronmen did, to pretend there was nothing of the softer sort under our rough exteriors.

“Have you breakfasted?” Father asked and waved to Royce. 

I stuffed my dripping wet handkerchief into my pocket--my fellow at the bar had declined the return of it--and said, “We’ve hardly just woken up.”

“Well,” Father said with a warm smile, “suppose you come eat at the house. Gage has been preparing a fearsome spread every day this week on the off chance you got your arrival date wrong.”

Jon’s stomach made an audible noise and I laughed. “I’d be delighted, Father,” I said. “Darling, d’you have any objections?”

“I’d be a fool if I did,” Jon said. “Let me go up and get the rest of our party, Uncle.”

“Of course,” he said easily and sat back down. “Arya and I will wait here.”

Father, the absolute dear, gave it a decent minute, making sure Jon wasn’t going to suddenly return before he said to me, “How are you truly?”

“Well enough,” I said, trying not to grit my teeth. Father wasn’t simply prying into my private affairs, I reminded myself. It was normal for the man to make sure I was taking care of myself.

“The tremors?” Father asked nervously. His eyes were mournful. “Your sight? Your lungs?”

“All parts functioning as they should,” I said and patted his shoulder. No doubt he was having ghastly flashbacks to the gas wards in King’s Landing, where he had been forced to visit me before I was summarily packed off to Dorne. Jon had followed a scant two weeks afterwards, but it had been Father who’d had to make the first few arrangements when we came back from oversea.

“I spoke to a doctor--” Father began, running a hand through his hair, but I absolutely couldn’t stand another round of medical gobbledygook.

“Aye, and I’ve more than spoken to a few myself,” I said, “and they all agree--so long as I keep myself away from factory work, chemicaled water, and cigarettes--I will stay hearty and hale.”

The less he knew about Pia’s never ending medicine bag, the better.

And it was just my good luck that Jon came clattering down the stairs a scant moment later, followed by our fellows. He came over at once, through his strange Arya-trouble sensing telepathy.

“You’ve positively saved me,” I murmured just for him, pressing my temple to his shoulder and looking up at him through my lashes. Father being summarily distracted by Peck and Pia, it was safe enough for him to tilt my chin up and steal a quick kiss.

“The Northron Inquisition over?” he asked in a mutter, looping his arm around my waist.

“For now,” I said with some relief. “Shall we go, Father? I am positively enthralled with the thought of seeing little Rickon again. Did you know, we only came back for his sakes? The poor little dear.”

Father gave me a look that said he saw right through my brilliant subject change, but said, “Aye? You might find yourself surprised. Six years is a long time for a little lad like him.”


	5. Chapter 5

Winterfell was just as imposing and stately as it had been when I was a little girl. Sixteen thousand years (a conservative estimate, according to my dear Old Nan) of Starks had thoroughly colonized the place and the moment the porter hauled the enormous gates open to let the car through, I felt at home.

“Why, it’s hardly changed at all,” I said to Jon, bracing myself against him as I stuck my head out the window to give a look around.

He snatched up my lopsided hat before it could fall and hauled me back in with the collar of my coat. “ _If_ you could behave yourself,” he said, which I immediately interpreted as a plea not to fall out of a moving vehicle.

But his hand on my hip was still gentle, so he wasn’t truly wroth. I shook him off and scrambled to the other window, leaning over Pia, who merely huffed, and craned my head back to look up the high curtain walls.

It was a short look, since Jon summarily fetched me back into my seat. “You are worse than Nymeria,” he huffed and restrained me with an arm across my shoulders. “Sit still before you do yourself any harm.”

“I hardly planned on bounding out the window,” I huffed back, but settled against him. 

Father, hands on the wheel as he maneuvered carefully--and wasn’t that just the sort of man Father was, to employ three chauffeur but insist on driving himself everywhere--said, “Arya,” in a mild tone that immediately put me in mind to stay firmly seated.

I wasn’t of mind to take a scolding at my elderly age of twenty-two, but parked myself down more firmly to avoid the scold all the same. Some people stay children to their parents for ever, even when they’ve been to war and back, and I was apparently one of them. The displeasure was unending.

“You can scramble about soon enough,” Jon said consolingly into my ear. “It’ll certainly make it harder for Aunt Catelyn to yell at you if she has to catch you first. I imagine between the age and the lungs, you two would be humorously matched.”

I managed to turn my laugh into some verisimilitude of a cough at the very last moment. “Wretch,” I hissed back.

“Aye, but you love me anyway,” he said and the way he put it, so plainly, let me know at once how nervous he was too.

“I do,” I said firmly, and caught his hand up in mine. “We shall weather it together, darling, by which to say, I fully expect you to trip my mother so I have a running start.”

The car came to a stop before he could respond, which was probably for the best. But Jon’s face was distinctly amused as he helped me from the car and then extended his hand to Pia. He still looked on the verge of smiling as he hied off to the second car.

I left him to it, assuming he could wrangle the wretched dogs between himself and Peck, and told Pia grandly, “Welcome to the fine old pile, my good woman.”

She craned her neck back to look up Winterfell’s enormous, craggy face. After a moment, she said in her most placid, deferential tone, “Wonderful, m’lady. Harrenhal hardly holds a candle to it.”

“Oh, Pia, you unromantic wretch,” I said fondly. “We’ll get you acclimate soon enough, and before too long, you’ll be staring out the windows of our latest accommodations positively pining for Winterfell’s majestic walls.”

Her face was still distinctly unimpressed, so I gave it up for a bad job and turned away. Nymeria and Ghost had sprung free of their automobile and were dashing about shoving their noses into anywhere they could find, disrupting several men at work in the process. The distant lack of screams at their massive forms was particularly refreshing and the short row of servants standing at attention near the doors looked completely unperturbed. 

“Shall we go inside?” Father asked, passing off the keys to one of the numerous, nervous chauffeurs. “Everyone is waiting in the hall for you.”

“We might as well,” Jon said with only a little flagging in his enthusiasm. “Peck, see to the beasts, would you?”

“Of course, sir,” Peck said. Pia was already bustling off, speaking quickly to a woman--good gods the housekeeper Mrs. Mordane had gotten old--no doubt enquiring about the state of the dusting in the place and how quickly hot water could be available if I needed a sudden dose of something foul. There was nothing to do but let Jon take my arm and start to steer me up towards the grand stairs.

And I say start, because at that moment came a shouted call behind us. I’m not too proud to admit I was startled into stillness, but Jon being perpetually preoccupied with ensuring my continual health and existence shoved me behind himself with a look of alarm just before an enormous red-haired giant crashed into us.

He was skinny as a stork, with oddly broad shoulders that gave him a regrettable scarecrow look, but I knew without a doubt it was Rickon who rapidly released Jon and let out a whoop like an air raid siren.

“A respectable assault,” Jon said with an edge of a scold. “You almost knocked your sister right over!” But as he said it, he was bending Rickon over a little and making an absolute mess of his hair with a friendly knuckling, so I doubt the poor boy took it too hard.

“Rickon!” I said. “Good gods! What in the seven hells have they been feeding you?”

“Whatever we can’t keep him out of,” Father said from behind us. “Rickon, did I not tell you to wait inside?”

“Couldn’t,” Rickon said, beaming at us. “Sorry, Da, but my pacing was driving Sansa mad.”

This was normally about the time I said something clever and cutting about the state of my dear sister’s mental acuities, but having just patched up my relationship for her, I endeavored for a nicer sentiment. “The poor dear,” I said.

“I’m poor too!” Rickon protested. “ _Sansa_ got to see you and I didn’t! She said you told her the most frightful stories and I am dreadfully jealous. I want a story a night, Arya! I positively demand it!”

And there was the snotty little ten year old I remembered. “I don’t remember telling Sansa any particularly interesting things,” I said after a moment. I raked my thoughts.

“We scarcely talked about the war,” Jon said with a concerned frown.

“Pray don’t--” Father began, seeing something on Rickon’s face but he was too late.

“Ghost stories!” Rickon cried. “Who cares about the war? That was ages ago. No, Sansa said you had the most chilling ghost stories!”

“Ah,” I said, caught unawares. I gave Jon an alarmed look that attempted to convey both, _How in the world are we to deal with this_ , and also, _I am going to strike her dead at once_.

“Rickon has taken an interest in the obscure,” Father said, pained. “It’s hardly dinnertable conversation. Rickon, pray, go inside and tell your mother your sister is here and that we will follow shortly.”

He went with a familiarly stubborn look and I lost all hope the subject wouldn’t come up again. The moment he was gone, Father said, “He’s gotten rather involved in this spiritualism movement and won’t stop going on about it. I told your mother that Robin was hardly going to be a good influence, but she wouldn’t hear a word about it. Arya,” this said to me with a _look_ , “I ask you don’t encourage him further.”

Panic mounting, I attempted an admirable defence. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about!” I said quickly. “I hardly have anything to do with the matter.”

Lurking behind Father’s shoulder, Jon gave me an extremely unimpressed face. I used my eyebrows to convey the thought, _You try and do better_ , but he sadly didn’t get a chance.

“If I remember correctly,” Father said with a look that spoke to how much he didn’t want to be amused by this, “you were rather involved in that sort of thing before the war. Spent your pocket money on one of those talking boards they kept selling.”

The panic abated. “Yes,” I said. “I remember.”

I didn’t, but it sounded like something I might have done on a lark to scare Sansa. Probably I’d find the dratted thing kicked until my bed and covered in a healthy layer of dust. 

“Say no more, Uncle,” Jon said easily and came around Father to offer me his arm. “We’ll find some other type of gruesome thing to fill his head with.”

Father looked relieved. I looked relieved. Jon looked amused. 

I thought it to be the end of the matter entirely until we passed into the Great Hall and saw all of the people arrayed there. There was Mother, of course, and Bran in his new chair, and Robb, and Loras--the poor chap--and Sansa who sprung up to embrace me at once. But it was what I saw through her veil of fly-away hair that struck me. 

There was a woman, tall but slight, with her arm looped through Robb’s. She was pretty in an unremarkable way, and looked like she had a kindly disposition. She was plainly tired, but if she was going to be the next Lady of Winterfell, that could be expected. I might have passed her over entirely if it wasn’t for her other companion, who was giving her such a look of poisonous hatred that I was taken aback.

And then Sansa let out a delighted squeal, still holding me firm, and that same companion turned her look to me. 

This look was less hatred than disgust and she narrowed her eyes wickedly before disappearing into thin air, taking with her all my hopes for a relatively quiet Year’s End.


	6. Chapter 6

“Oh Arya!” Sansa said again in that same pleased tone. “Oh, I am so happy to see you.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes,” and patted at her back. “Do let go,” I said in a low tone in her ear. “You are crushing my ribs admirably.”

She sprung back at once, looking horrified, but I didn’t give her a chance to apologize. Her fiance had come forward to corral her and let the others have their turn and I seized his hand to shake. “And Loras!” I said loudly. “How are you, dear man!” I attempted to give him a significant look, but he only stared back with polite melancholy.

“Well enough, Arya,” he said. “Sansa, darling, step back a little and let the others see her. It’s hardly fair to monopolize the lady when you’ve just finished your own visit with her.”

Any other man might have said it chidingly, but Loras sounded like an actor politely reciting his lines.

“Oh!” Sansa said, flushed, and stood back several steps. It gave me a chance to flash one quick look about the room--Jon was knelt down to embrace Bran, Mother and Robb were waiting patiently, no mysterious visitor at all--before Father took my arm to steer me further into the room.

“Arya,” Robb said with warmth and came for his hug.

I allowed it, patting his shoulder kindly and taking a moment to gird my loins. And then he was gone and Mother was giving me a measured look.

Probably I didn’t exactly measure _up_ , but she held out her hands all the same and said warmly, “Arya, sweetling. It’s been so long.”

“Aye,” I allowed and kissed her cheek. It was a familiar childhood breath of same air--the lavender perfume, the face powder, the disapproval. “It’s very good to see you again, Mother.”

“It’s been far _too_ long,” Mother said meaningfully and caught my hands up to give them a squeeze.

I might have lobbied back a salvo but was thoroughly distracted by the cold sweat that started racing down my back. The room didn’t seem as warm as when I’d first come into it and I sucked in a panicked, slightly wheezed breath.

I don’t know how he does it, the dear man, but he’s been doing it since he was in short pants and I was running around in nothing but a plaster of mud avoiding a bath. If I am very lucky, he will continue doing it the rest of my life. 

Jon knew at once something was wrong and came to help me with it.

He slipped his arm through mine so gracefully, so neatly, that it seemed as if Mother had decided to let go of my hands on her own, and leant me firmly against him.

“Aunt Catelyn,” he said in his most polite voice. “We were delighted to receive your letter.”

I took his overwhelming warmth with relief, and put more of my weight against him. The constricting room had nothing to do with my poor health--or entirely to do with my poor health, if some sources are to be believed--but as always he managed to make it abate faster as he shielded me away from the world at large.

He and Mother exchanged some (false) pleasantries I heard as through a tunnel, muffled and incomprehensible. Mother’s look was distinctly disapproving but Jon wasn’t the only one on the offensive--Robb was quick to steer forward his wife and let the happy subject consume all the conversation.

“Jon!” he cried loud enough that it came through the cotton in my ears clearly. “Arya! Allow me to introduce Lady Jeyne. I expect you shall love her at once.”

He had the slightly idiotic look of the thoroughly besotted and his wife looked exceedingly embarrassed by the attention.

“How do you do,” she said pleasantly enough, looking at us anxiously. “I’m so sorry you couldn’t come to the wedding but I am--” she choked up for a moment, dashing tears from her eyes, “--so excited to meet my other brother and sister at last.”

I had never considered what kind of wife Robb would like, but if I _had_ given it more thought I wouldn’t have given him much hope. He was always at once too brash and too sensitive. But seeing Lady Jeyne’s quick, entirely genuine tears at the thought of more Stark relations, I knew they made a fine match.

“More than pleased to make the acquaintance,” Jon said, forgoing a shake to keep me upright. “And at last. But believe us, my lady, the regret over missing the happy occasion is entirely our own.”

The dear man. He meant it too, which made Robb light up brighter than a search light. I struggled through the swimming faintness to offer my hand with a smile and it was only Jon’s firm moorings that kept my feet entirely on the floor when the good Lady Jeyne took it.

I’ve never been one to do something stupid for the sheer thrill of it--no matter what Jon might tell you when he’s in his cups--so I had a perfectly valid reason to make the accurate comparison: it was like sticking my hand into an electrical box and grabbing up all the pretty colored wires at once.

The sensation lasted half a second, long enough for my nervous system to try and shoot me upwards, followed swiftly by the full-body feeling of floating in a large, cool pool of water.

The familiarly soft, faintly tickling sensation fell across my face, like someone had drawn a veil over it. I clutched Jon’s arm--he was the only thing left in the room with color--and made a distinctly rasping noise.

“Static shock!” Jon said with forced cheerfulness to the blurred grey bodies standing around us. They stared back, featureless. “Forgive us, my lady, it’s entirely Arya’s fault. Her maid must have put her in wool stockings.”

And then, under the pretext of brushing a hair off my cheek, his fingers found the edge of the veil and he threw it off my face again.

Color came back in a blink, along with sound and temperature and gravity. I corrected my sway as fast as I could and said faintly, “So sorry.”

Jeyne must have felt something as well--she gave me a look that spoke firmly to nervousness and a sudden desire to please--I hoped that she didn’t like I didn’t like her, and said, “Of course, of course!”

“Perhaps Arya had better sit down,” came a calm voice of wondrous reason. “By the fire, mayhap? Everything I’ve read says cold air can agitate ailments.” Bran smiled helpfully.

My ever present hospital gown was a better defense than the lauded trenches of Chroyane. I was steered at once to a seat near the largest fireplace and Sansa, with an incredibly fretful look, went about fetching me everything an invalid might need 

Jon was loathed to leave me, but Robb latched onto his shoulder with a grim look and drew him away firmly to where Father and Rickon were waiting, no doubt to inquire as to my possibly imminent demise. Mother took his place instead and put her hand against my forehead. 

“You’re freezing,” she said with great disapproval. “How long were you on that train, and hardly dressed for the weather! Sansa, bring her a blanket for her lap.”

I didn’t _want_ a blanket for my lap, but nobody bothered to consult me on the matter. Bran, my dearest brother and best conspiritor, shot me a look of complete understanding as my skirts were smothered under rather horse-y smelling wool.

But it was Jeyne who surprised me the most. She knelt down with hardly a care for her pretty dress and the rather ashy floor, and picked up my wrist with an even look. Her watch, I noticed, as she glanced between the two, was pinned to the front of her dress and upside down.

“Your heart rate’s low,” she said firmly. “Open up now, let me check your gums. How long ago _was_ the gas exposure? Robb hardly seemed to know when he told me about it.”

Oh gods, I thought as she shoved her fingers into my mouth without so much as a by-your-leave. A nurse.

And it wasn’t just that I now thoroughly hated medical professionals--a long and gruesome convalescence could do that to any woman, never mind that before I was stuck into a ward I was half overseeing a field one myself--but my problems were not just of the body and I was overcome with a horrible vision of my brand new goodsister discovering that, here, in the middle of the Great Hall.

“Just a moment of faintness!” I squeaked as the inquisitive hand withdrew. I cleared my throat. “Coming into warm air suddenly from the cold. I shall feel better presently.”

“Arya,” Mother said in a tone that was more severe than Pia could ever manage. I could only imagine what would come next--a thorough lecture on how lucky I was that Jeyne was on hand? Instructions on how I was to enter and egress since I apparently couldn’t manage that on my own?

But my luck held out--while my main ally was being routed by my brother, my secondary allies had summoned reinforcements. “My lady,” Pia said in frank disappointment as she came clicking into the room with her dreaded bag.

Jeyne was now scrutinizing my fingernails for sudden blueness. Pia was not too friendly in muscling her out of the way but I could scarcely regret it when she snapped open her bag and announced in a cold tone, “If you _wouldn’t mind_ ,” to the woman to get her to leave off.

There was a single trembling moment in which Pia bristled like a cat and Jeyne stared back with grim resolution--gods save me from lady’s maids and nurses--before my goodsister relented. “Of course,” she said with tried grace. “You’re her regular nurse, I suppose?”

“Her companion,” Pia said tartly. “Her ladyship doesn’t hardly even _remember_ well enough to look after her own health.”

It was a chiding in Pia’s regular vein, but I truly wish she had said literally anything else. A sudden declaration I was mad, or that I suffered from a hideously nervous disposition and was making the whole lot up, or even that I was plagued with unholy purpose and Pia was the not-so-silent sister sent to tend my endangered soul.

But instead I was forced to watch as Jeyne’s finely analytical mind jumped at once to _brain damage from gas exposure_ and her eyes filled with sudden tears.

Pia’s bag was summarily snapped open and I was forced to swallow a series of potions that I just _knew_ served little purpose but to forcibly calm my nerves and irritate my stomach.

“Dreadfully sorry,” Loras as saying to Mother and Bran as I choked down something that tasted on the far side of rotting. “I thought she had such an, ah, _haunted_ expression that I ought to fetch her maid.”

They stared at him blankly, but it did the fine job of turning Sansa the color of milk. The look she gave me was full of such blank horror that I could barely bring myself to nod and confirm it. 

But I did. Yes, there was indeed a ghost plaguing Winterfell and Lady Jeyne was most assuredly being affected.


	7. Chapter 7

By the time I managed to wrest myself from the sticky clutches of my attendant and shoo her back off, I had resigned myself to the idea. Of course Winterfell would have _at least_ one ghost--probably a million Starks had died here.

We had our own crypts, for gods’ sakes, and due to a mischievous childhood I was entirely prepared to confirm there were still literal skeletons in them.

The completely poisonous look at Jeyne was probably coincidence, or else the good lady ghoul had died with a touch of indigestion. I was fully prepared to explain this theory to Jon and to receive lauded applause for such a logical conclusion--whenever he managed to extract himself from Father and Robb. But I hardly got a chance to signal to him when the doors to the hall burst open and Mrs. Mordane entered at the closest to a run I have ever seen her come.

“Lady Stark!” she gasped then jerked to an abrupt stop and frantically smoothed her skirts. “Lady Stark,” she tried again, “I must ask you to come with me to the library _at once_.” She panted for breath and spit out, “His Lordship has also been _urgently_ requested.”

Mother raised a single eyebrow but when nothing else was forthcoming, said, “Of course, Mrs. Mordane. Jeyne, Sansa, I trust you can make your sister and Jon comfortable.”

Father had adopted a grim mien but Mother simply looked determined as she hooked her arm through his and they proceeded out the room.

“It’s happened again!” Rickon declared the very moment the doors clanged shut behind them. He was a study in excitement and I felt a sudden swelling of anxiety come across me. 

It would be very horrible, I thought, if my theory didn’t hold water after all.

“What’s happening?” Jon demanded and grabbed Rickon’s arm to steer him closer to my own well fortified position. The look Jon gave me as he established Rickon in a chair said clearly, _We are in the drink again_.

“Oh Rickon,” Sansa said at once with desperate and false cheer. “Not this again! He thinks we are being haunted,” she told me and somehow managed to keep a straight face as she said it.

“I keep telling the old man it’s simply a case of winter coming in and making problems,” Robb said with a knowledgeable look at Loras. He attempted to look wise and worldly but as I had once watched him do such things as rub porridge into Sansa’s hair, I was thus unprepared to believe the act. “We haven’t had one for five years and a sudden onset of snow is bound to disrupt some things.”

His face said he believed it, but his voice had a false note he couldn’t disguise.

“Yes,” Rickon said dramatically. “Like the restless undead!”

“Everyone,” Jeyne said in a firm but motherly tone, “knows that ghosts don’t exist.”

I can’t say to what exactly my face did when she said this but I suspect it wasn’t favorable.

At last the dear man couldn’t help it any longer. Jon put his hand across his mouth to keep in the bark of laughter and struggled to turn it into a permissible cough. He groped out a hand, laid it on my shoulder, and I patted it sympathetically.

Jeyne looked alarmed. “Are you well?” she asked with great and tender concern. “Here, Mister Snow, have my chair and I will find you some water.”

“Oh, call him Jon,” I instructed as he staggered into the offered seat. “And don’t faff about calling me Lady anything either. First names should do us just fine.”

“Of course!” Jeyne said and her eyes veritably sparkled with excitement. “I should have thought! For we are all family now.” Her look to me said this was a favorable thought and I couldn’t bring myself to disabuse her.

“Yes, yes,” I said and waved a hand grandly. Then I set the horse blanket I’d been gifted aside and stood up. “Rickon,” I said, “I would like very much to go and see _exactly_ what is happening. Perhaps you’d like to show me?”

“Arya,” Sansa said in a disapproving tone and Robb said at once, “You hardly look recovered enough to go running about!”

There would be no help from Jon--he was still sucking in great whoops of air and trying to keep his sides from splitting open. “We shall go at a veritable snail’s pace,” I said and offered Rickon my arm.

The last time the little lad had escorted me anywhere I had been forced to look down at the top of his head when I wanted to address him. Now the thought of having to look up gave me a strong sense of vertigo.

“I think I’ll go, too,” Bran said and stretched his arms out before laying them on his wheel rims. “Send for Hodor, would you, Sansa?”

“Surely gadding about wouldn’t be too comfortable,” Robb tried a final time. “Mother’d be so disappointed if she came back and you weren’t somewhere with your feet up.” His voice had a warning edge in it.

Ah, even the most efficient defenses have their downsides. “I’m hardly going to stagger into a nice dark corner and fall over there,” I said with great dignity. 

“You’re ill,” Robb said plainly. “Arya, I just watched you nearly faint from shaking a woman’s hand. You’re to stay here and rest.” 

Now I might have to take some delicate prying from Father, but I wasn’t going to let a man I hadn’t seen in six years, not even my own brother, tell me about my health and how best to manage it. Despite the discomfort everyone was starting to show at the argument, I soldiered on.

“A walk shall do me good,” I said firmly. “And the library always has a fire laid--Maester Luwin is so careful with the books. I will be perfectly comfortable.”

“Jon,” Robb appealed, but he had stopped laughing by now and leant back in his chair, giving Robb hardly a glance. 

“Arya knows her limits,” he said evenly.

“Oh, you just want to go spying!” Robb burst at last. “Come out of it, Arya. Being little Underfoot was fine and all when we were children but there’s no excuse now for that sort of thing.” He ran an agitated hand through his hair and added hotly, “Isn’t this the same poor behavior that got you into all this damn trouble in the first place? Gadding off to war to get underfoot and coming back half-killed!”

I felt as though I had been slapped. I was taken so unawares that the next breath would hardly come. To reduce my medical service in such a way--

To reduce the sacrifices we had made in the fields at Ny Sar, myself and all my unlucky friends--

I don’t know what my face did but through a haze of growing red, Robb looked alarmed and demanded, “Sit back down, sister, before you damn well fall over.”

There was no witty repertoire at hand. I could scarcely keep back a furious shout and felt myself start to literally tremble with rage.

When the warm arm laid itself around my waist I could hardly bring myself to be surprised. “Winterfell,” Jon said in a very cold voice, “is still Arya’s home. You are not Lord yet, Robb, and hardly able to restrict where she goes. I would ask you kindly _to watch how you speak to my lady in the future_.”

Rickon, with eyes the size of dinner plates, said in a very fast and high voice, “We had better hurry to the library! They might have a chance to clean it all up before we get there!” He promptly fled.

“Yes,” I managed, seething.

“I think I shall go with you,” Sansa said, also coldly. “Loras--”

He took her arm and steered her out of the room without a backwards glance. I wanted very much to follow her but knew I had to say _something_ first, lest Robb thought I’d let the cutting comment pass.

“Gadding about!” I spat. “If you think there was anything pleasurable or entertaining about the war,” I told him through clenched teeth, “then you are a bigger fool than I have ever thought.” I then struck as low a blow as I could, feeling fully justified to do so. 

“But I think, if you had truly thought that, you wouldn’t have been so quick to weasel out of your own damn service at the first sign of combat.”

His face turned obligingly red with embarrassment and rage.

“Darling,” I said to Jon in a more even tone, “the air is poor here. Might we leave?”

“Gladly,” he said in that same chilling voice as before as before and took me out of the room.

Down the hall, away from Robb’s sight when Bran came out, I stopped for a moment and pressed my face to Jon’s shoulder. He put his hand on the back of my neck and said nothing--I don’t think there was anything anyone could say to take away the deep and terrible hurt of it.

“Dearheart,” was all he said, so low and just for me. It was said so tenderly and gently that it gave me a pain in my heart from how much I loved him. I couldn’t bring myself to speak, but settled for clutching his shirt in a tight fist, just to the left of his heart. A silent, oft used statement.

When the soft sound of Bran’s wheels came towards us, I peeled myself away unhappily. Bran was a sweet young man and I highly doubt he would have said anything nasty or horrible, but I felt enough raw nervous had been exposed for the day. To hear him say something about my marriage--never mind that to him it was just an affair--would have send me careening off into the snow and then to the Rock shortly after, ghost or no.

Jon must have been feeling protective of me just the same as I felt of him, because he gave Bran a rather cool look.

“I suspect Robb’ll regret that for some time,” Bran said diplomatically and wheeled himself over to take my hand.

“Do you know, I don’t particularly care,” Jon said in an aggravated tone. “You’re more than welcome to come to the library with us, Bran, but if you want to spend the whole time apologizing for Robb, find somewhere else to do it.”

“Not at all,” Bran said easily and squeezed my fingers. “I’m frankly a little disgusted, myself. I just wanted Arya to know that it was hardly a premeditated moment.”

“Helpful,” Jon said in a way that conveyed exactly how unhelpful he found it. “Come or go, Bran, but just shut up either way, would you?”

I gave Bran a faint smile to soften the blow, but I think he saw I agreed, because he was obligingly quiet as we proceeded to the back stairs. Rickon was waiting for us anxiously, dancing from foot to foot. “You are so slow!” he cried, leaping up several of the steps at once. “Come _on_!”

“Go ahead then,” Bran said easily. “Hodor will be along in a minute to help me with the stairs.”

This being found agreeable by all parties, we went up and on to the library. We were halfway down the long hallway when we came across Sansa and Loras again. Sansa looked dreadfully pale. “It’s horrible,” she said in a whisper and indicated the cracked door. 

Someone behind it was weeping in gasping little sobs. More angry than frightened, I think, but either way Mother was having no luck calming her. Old Maester Luwin was discussing something with Father in a grim tones and I let go of Jon’s arm and crept closer.

“--don’t know how long we can let this go on,” Maester Luwin said. “The staff are most disturbed, Lord Stark, and I find I am not exactly pleased with this turn of events myself.”

“What is it!” Rickon hissed in my ear and I jumped a foot into the air with the smallest and most delicate of shrieks.

There was an immediate pause from inside the library, save the noise of the sobbing, before Father said wearily, “You might as well all come in.”

“Good job,” Sansa snapped at Rickon, who looked mildly guilty. 

“At least we can see now,” he sulked and threw the door open.

And, well, there certainly was a lot to see. Winterfell had a large and august library--a veritable goldmine for the bookishly inclined. Usually, it was organized in neat rows of shelves and tables and chairs, et cetera. But a malicious hand had certainly come through and disrupted the usual array.

All the books were off the shelves--the shelves themselves being shoved rudely against the walls--and the books being piled up at points around the room.

Not neat piles, mind, but strange and precariously tilted towers, wide-spanning arches and thin delicate ones, ominous rising spiral steps and tall empty wells that made me feel rather ill to look at. There was something strange and sinister with the whole arrangement and I took back Jon’s arm with haste to lean against him.

“Well,” Bran, recently arrived, said from the doorway and fell silent. 

“Yes,” Father said wearily and gave us all an unhappy look. “Some of the hall boys have decided to amuse themselves.”

“Hall boys!” wept the woman sitting collapsed on the floor with her head against Mother’s knee. No doubt one of Maester Luwin’s proteges--she turned towards the farthest stack and moaned through her tears, “No hall boy could have done that. _Never_.”

Like a moth to a flame, I was drawn forward to the tallest of the structures. A master hand had constructed it--a sort of conical tower with walls that were far from solid. Some bastard cousin to filigree had presented itself, with arrangements of books and open spaces letting the window-light shine through, letting it highlight the color, because all of them were _blue_. Blue spines, blue covers, blue letters across the backings. A veritable bowerbird’s house.

Across the top, there was a delicate dome with a precariously open book wedged in as the keystone piece.

“Jon,” I said as if through a dream. It was enough--he knew what I wanted. His strong hands circled my waist, a burning ready fire in them, and lifted me upwards.

I reached out to touch the book--I could just barely reach--and felt again the sensation of the veil, the soft lapping sound of the disturbed water in the pool as I floated in it. 

I breathed, it faded.

I took the book.

A sudden cacophony of noise--everyone seemed to yelp or cry out as the inevitable happened.

In hindsight, probably a stupid idea taking the damn thing, but the construction would’ve had to come down eventually. Jon snatched me back against his chest just in time to avoid the sudden tumbling of hardcover spines and crumpling pages and I heard the weeping woman give the sort of scream that usually proceeds a dead faint.

All of the books, as they came down, started in one piece and ended their descent torn in half across the floor.

They unearthed, as the tower fell, a brutally savaged chair. It was, of course, _blue_ , though now mostly covered in snowy white heaps of stuffing, string, and large upholstery staples. 

“Oh,” Sansa moaned. “Tell me that is not Jeyne’s chair.”

Jon’s hands tightened around my waist. “Arya,” he said in a tone that spoke to sudden danger and his immediate desire to remove me from it.

The honored book, the book of the highest point of the tower, was safely clutched against my chest. “Jon,” I said evenly. “Perhaps we might retrieve our _belongings_ and take a room here instead.”


	8. Chapter 8

The sofa in Sansa’s solar was very comfortable. I pressed my face deeper into the mountains of cushions and attempted to stop noticing the sound of Loras’s pacing around the brutal thumping of my headache.

“Perhaps,” Sansa said from her huddled perch in the window seat, then nothing else. She’d been saying sudden singular words for nearly half an hour now, then stopping just as quickly as she started.

“Loras,” I said after a moment, giving up, “give the woman some brandy and find a damn place to _sit down_.”

“I don’t drink,” Sansa said in a tremulous voice. 

“You liar,” I said and gave up on having any dark and quiet. Better a distraction anyway. I hauled myself up to give them both a gimlet look and told Sansa, “I have seen Margaery pour more than one bottle of champagne down your throat, sweet sister.”

Loras was fetching the ordered drink. “Take one yourself,” I told him. “Doctor’s orders.”

“You’re hardly a doctor,” he said in his normal dry tone, but he did as he was told.

“No, but I know more than a few and can safely say it is just what they would prescribe,” I said, watching him pour. But instead of drinking the stuff himself, he brought me the glass.

“My lady,” he said with great respect to my raised brow, “I’ve been tasked with guarding you and would much rather do so sober.”

See, Jon is lovely but the dear man is an absolute despot in regards to my health. Nearly get _somethinged_ by a single ornery spirit and you’re hardly left alone in a haunted place without someone around to mollycoddle you.

“Loras,” I said, “there’s hardly anything anyone--even you--can do without the damn sword and I am sorry to say, it’s not exactly here at hand.”

“They’ll come back _soon_ , won’t they?” Sansa asked with rising hysteria.

“Drink your brandy,” I told her sourly. “Honestly, it’s as if you don’t trust me with your supernatural safety.”

“Your other-worldly welfare,” Loras supplied from the mantle.

“Your spectral security,” I lobbied back.

“Your occult ongoing.”

“Your--your--oh, damn,” I said. Dratted headache, making thinking nearly impossible. I shunted the rest of the brandy down my throat in defeat.

Mysteriously, this didn’t reassure Sansa. Looking peaked, she said in nearly a wail, “I knew I should have gone to Highgarden!”

“Is that where your better half is?” I asked and lay back down with an arm across my face. 

“My dear sister was summoned home under pain of great financial finality,” Loras said and seated himself with a thump.

“Shame,” I said. I liked Margaery quite a bit--she was terrible hand in a crisis but always remained a great laugh to be around. “And your, ah, _half_ , Loras?”

“The Landing,” Loras said with an extra helping of melancholy. “Robert wanted to see him and he could hardly refuse. Wedding matters,” he added in a politely disinterested tone.

Just as Margaery had brought a sense of purpose and intention into Sansa’s life, Renly had similarly brought joy and happiness to Loras after the war. I couldn’t personally stand the man--he was a lackwit and a Baratheon, two strikes against him, but Loras was the type to prefer a permanently sunny face in the middle of the most of rainy days to someone more dull but intellectually inclined.

In fine figuring, he himself had more than enough brains for two. “No doubt you shall all reunite in the new year and endure yet another romping round of parties together,” I said. “Sansa and Renly shall conspire to invite the finest acrobats, bards, and prancing Skagosi unicorns and you and Margaery shall proceed to grin and pretend you wouldn’t prefer to be totally isolated hermits. A fine affair.” 

“Pray,” I added thoughtfully after a moment, “do not invite me.”

“Is she always like this when she’s in pain?” Loras asked Sansa in a low tone.

“Yes,” Sansa said just as softly. “Mayhap a cold cloth?”

“I don’t _want_ a cold cloth,” I said with great irritation.

“What can I bring you then?” Sansa asked with the greatest kindness and I heard her cross the room. She pressed her hand to my cheek and exclaimed, “You’re freezing! Loras, get her the blankets off my bed.”

“I don’t _want_ blankets,” I snapped and shoved her hand away. The dreadful pounding increased.

“Well, what _do_ you want, my lady?” Loras asked gently. Like he was nanny and I was a fussy child.

“A bath,” I muttered. “An end to bloody ghosts dancing about my brain. My husband to return with his very large sword and ensure none of us shall be murdered by stray spirits in our sleep tonight.” 

Loras huffed a laugh and pushed his hair off his forehead. “Your sister can provide you with the first,” he said kindly, “and I will endeavor to expedite the last. As for the middle, my lady, I believe you are on your own.”

“Of course you say that about the one I want the most,” I said and slid off the sofa to puddle onto the floor.

“Life _is_ hard,” Loras said dryly and exited the room.

“Sansa,” I said as I contemplated all the little piles of dust under her furnishings, “do you know where Mother’s decided to stick us?”

“Ah,” Sansa said after a moment. “If you really aren’t staying in the town, I suppose I should, ah, speak to her about arrangements.”

Her face was grim but determined as she stood. “You stay here,” she said kindly. “Rest as much as you’re able. I will convince Mother it’s in everyone’s best interests to--”

“Allow me to live in flagrant sin under her roof?” I groaned into the carpet. “Yes, do, and I wish you great good luck.”

“Thank you,” Sansa said primly. “I think I shall need it.”

She left the room and I laid my head back and considered the ceiling. The carpet here was quite nice for such an ancient thing. Hardly worn down at all. I squirmed myself closer to the hearth, shut my eyes and fell asleep presently.

I woke up with a song stuck in my head, the same few bars playing over and over in a fussy, temperamental manner, but the dratted words that went with them were being withheld. Sansa was back in her window perch stitching something busily and smiled over at me when she saw I was awake.

“What were you singing?” I demanded, hardly at my best when I returned from an unexpected trip to the land of Nod. I rubbed stars into my eyes and yawned fiercely. 

“Singing?” Sansa asked. “I’ve been here nearly an hour waiting for you to wake up, and I’ve been quiet the whole time.” She set her sewing aside and considered. “I suppose I could sing something for you, if you like.”

I yawned again. “Suppose you know a song that goes like this--” and proceeded to spectacularly mangle the sounds in my head as they came out of my mouth.

Sansa looked appalled. “Arya,” she said firmly, “ _no one_ knows a song like that, and I assure you that it’s because the gods love us all very much.”

“It was hardly that bad,” I sulked as the tune in question chased itself around and around. “Anyways, it doesn’t matter. Gods, did you say I was asleep for an hour?”

“Yes,” Sansa said and took up her things again. “And I dare say you needed it. You look much restored.”

“Aye,” I murmured as the music washed itself away with an urgent thought. “Has Jon and all returned?”

“Not twenty minutes ago,” Sansa said. “He’s got, well, _it_ in a case and says we have to wait until night to do anything with it.”

“Yes, the damn thing can’t abide sunlight,” I said and attempted to rise in a wobbly fashion, clutching at the sofa. “Has to be the brightest thing in the room or it sulks miserably.”

“Here now, are you sure you should be getting up?” Sansa dropped her things again in favor of shoving her shoulder under mine and bolstering me. She looked alarmed. “I know you hardly like anyone to comment, but you really were quite ill earlier.”

I felt alright now, in truth. A bit grubby, and more than a bit hungry, but the aurochs were done dancing in my head. “I need breakfast,” I said. “And a bath. And possibly to never touch Jeyne again.”

The look of alarm grew. “Jeyne isn’t--” Sansa demanded and paused. “You know,” she went on, “I’m not exactly sure what to ask you. She isn’t--well--like you and Jon, is she?”

“Hardly,” I said and let her drape me across the sofa again. The stack of pillows there was truly divine. What in the seven hells had Sansa stuffed them with? “She’s got something about her.”

“Considering Robb’s confessed this whole mess started when she moved here, I would say so,” Sansa told me and went to ring for her own maid. 

“Yes, yes,” I said. “But I’m saying I had such trouble because she’s got something _around_ her. Her person. Wait--what do you mean Robb confessed? What’s the great pillock told you?”

Sansa shot me a considering look. “Eat your breakfast and take your bath,” she said as her maid came in with a tray. “I’ve decided I shan’t tell you until tomorrow.” 

I gave Sansa a look of absolute betrayal but before I could protest she said tartly, “I know you far too well, Arya. You get into something and it’s like having to drag a terrier out of a rat hole. If I tell you anything now you’ll be off and running after it until you fall down from exhaustion.”

She gave me a supremely irritating look only older sisters seem to know and added, “Consider my nerves if you’re determined to ignore your own. Jon’s already in a mood and adding your sudden self-made distress would hardly make it better.”

“Other than the obvious reason,” I said as I picked up my fork--the tray was beautiful, classically Gage’s, the flower in the minuscule vase was a sweet touch--”what’s got him in a snit?”

“Rob tried to apologize without actually apologizing. It’s by far the worst thing his college chums taught him,” Sansa said. “It went poorly.”

“Yes, I imagine it fell over like a lead balloon. But,” I said, remembering her earlier critical errand, “speaking of my bear of a husband, what did Mother say about where she’s stowing us?”

Sansa’s mien took a distinctly nervous turn. “Well,” she said slowly, “I asked her where to put your things and she said to put them in Jon’s rooms.”

Jon’s old bedroom (and bed) was a fine size, the attached solar cosy and comfortable with its two fireplaces, and the bathroom boasted a tub big enough for me to float around in. “Yes, that’s fine,” I said. “But get on with it, Sansa--where does she _think_ that _Jon’s_ going to sleep?”

“Ah,” Sansa said and came to sit delicately beside me. She picked at a crumb of toast from my tray and I grew nervous.

“If she thinks he’s keeping his room at the Log--” I began, but Sansa shook her head frantically. 

“No, no!” she reassured me with a gingerly pat to my shoulder. “She, ah, said to put him in his rooms, too.”

Order being duly restored, I relaxed. “I half didn’t think you’d manage to harangue her into it,” I said easily. “Been learning at Margaery’s knee, have you?”

“Well, that’s just the thing,” Sansa edged. “I didn’t _anything_ her into it. I said, ‘Mother, where do you want Arya’s things to go?’ and she said, ‘I thought she’d be the most comfortable in Jon’s rooms,’ and I said, ‘Yes, alright, I agree. Where would you like Jon’s things to go?’ and she gave me the oddest look and said, ‘Well, put them in Jon’s rooms, too.’”

I boggled.

“She said that?” I managed weakly.

“Yes.”

“Unprompted.”

“Yes!” Sansa said and threw up her hands in exasperation. “And then when I acted surprised she looked at me as if I’d lost my faculties.”

A thought came to mind. “Mother does know Jon’s grown accustomed to sleeping where his things are, right?”

“Yes, I imagine she does,” Sansa said and ate a piece of my bacon with a vehemence.

“And,” I went on, “she knows I am also accustomed to sleeping where my things are--yes, including my husband, do not start, Sansa--”

“Yes,” Sansa managed despite her quickly waning patience. “Mother fully knows that if we stick your things together, you’re damn well going to sleep together!”

And then, in fast review of her words, turned red.

“Well it is what married couples do,” I told her and finished off my tea with a satisfied sigh. “As a soon-to-be-married woman yourself, I’d have hoped you’d be more understanding.”

“Oh like you waited ‘til the nuptials,” Sansa muttered. 

“Like you _supposedly_ are?” I demanded with glee. “Yes, Sansa, the first leave Jon got, I ravished him thoroughly! But never mind that! Because a chittering bird has told me some _very_ interesting facts about your own first little tete-a-tete with your rosy bride-to-be!”

It wasn’t, of course, true of me and Jon. It was the romantic thing, which everybody seemed to expect. But the first leave Jon got, he attempted to bodily remove me to a boat back to White Harbor and I attempted to shout his ears deaf about terms like _hypocrisy_ and _noblesse duty_ and then all four foot five of my supervising nurse mentor came and shouted at us both until we were as cowering children at nanny’s skirts. Very romantic, of course.

Never mind the second leave, of course. The one after six months of grueling circumstances on both sides and enough yearning letters to fill a library. _That_ leave was no one’s business but our own and the poor soul that had had the misfortune of having the hotel room next to ours.

 _If he_ doesn’t _marry you after that_ , the most beautiful woman in Braavos had said from her cracked hotel door as I staggered past her to the stairs, _I would be_ more _than happy to take his place_.

The dark look Jon had given her as he went passed himself said exactly how little chance that had of happening.

I was so thoroughly--if briefly--lost in the delicious reminiscing that Sansa had time enough to steal the last of my bacon before I came out of it.

She said around a chipmunk’s mouthful of the stuff, “ _Perhaps_ that may be true--” followed by a stern look when I opened my mouth, “--but it doesn’t change the fact that you are my sister and Jon is my dear cousin, and it is a matter I very little want to consider.”

“Yes, alright,” I said. “We’ll have a truce, and leave it at this: yes or no, when I come down to breakfast tomorrow, Mother is _not_ , in fact, going to faint over perpetuating extramarital sin in her own house.”

Sansa covered her eyes with a hand. “Arya,” she said wearily, “please stop examining all of this gift horse’s teeth and instead start accepting it with a little more grace.”

“Yes, yes, fine,” I said, still feeling deeply suspicious. “As it seems like all my breakfast has disappeared--” and she didn’t even have the decency to look guilty, “--I think I shall go have my bath. And afterwards, I’ll let you watch me interrogate a suspicious and possibly evil book.”

Sansa hesitated. “Will the sword be there?” she asked nervously.

“ _Yes_ the sword is going to be there. I’ll even draw the curtains myself.”

“Alright then,” Sansa agreed. “It sounds well enough to me.”


	9. Chapter 9

I lay back in the water, floating with my eyes shut. It lapped at the sides of my face, dragged at my hair gently, rocked me so slightly and imperceptibly that gravity itself seemed to disappear.

In the blackness beyond my eyelids, I summoned the moment of the stone pool. I couldn’t see for true when they put me in it, so the things I brought to mind were purely sensory--Jaqen’s cool hands as he set me into the water, the slow dripping as Sabine raised her arms to steady me, the sweet and floral scent as Tytos mixed in the poison.

Slowly, as delicately as I could, I put my fingers to my hairline and gathered up the veil. It was as silk to my touch as I laid just the tips of my fingers to it.

Under it would be a place that was both _between_ and _beyond_. A place of coolness. A place of true silence. A place where if I went there, I would walk alone and faceless.

But I wasn’t ready yet. Shivering, I dropped my hand and shoved myself up out of the black water and back into the land of heat and light and bath towels.

“Nearly finished?” Jon asked from the foot of the tub. I startled, caught unawares, and banged my knee painfully into the side.

“Ow, gods damn it!” I howled and clutched the offending appendage. “And just how long have you been there?” I demanded sourly when he laughed. 

“Quarter of an hour,” Jon said, eyes crinkled, and set aside the greasy rag he held in one hand to turn the tap. More hot water came rushing out and I lay back gratefully into the heat of it. “Have you been in there long enough for that to go cold,” he asked, “or did you start it out that way, you little fool?”

“Don’t remember,” I said and brushed wet hair out of my face. “How is it?” I demanded. To clarify, I flung a hand grandly towards him, scattering water drops through the fine steam, and mimed swinging some sort of vague chopping instrument. 

Jon twisted the tap back off and looked down at the sword laying across his lap. It gave off a single sickly glint in the weak sunlight coming through the window slits and I said in the exact tone of voice I used with Nymeria and Ghost, “None of that now, _thank_ you.”

The glint disappeared and it went sullenly matte again.

“It’s well enough,” Jon said with a snort and sheathed it before he set it carefully aside. “Think it knows something’s going on?”

“If it hasn’t set anything on fire yet,” I said with amusement, “I would wager it does.”

Longclaw was a fine enough sword--on a permanent sort of loan from dear General Jeor Mormont--who had given it over shortly after Jon had pried it from its ornamental perch on Mormont’s billet’s wall and used it to whack a literal hellish beast into several dead pieces in the middle of a dinner party.

Mormont swore, of course, that it had never set itself on fire before that point but I was suspicious of the whole matter. The damn thing had too much personality to have just been a charmingly large chunk of steel before Jon first picked it up and swung it around.

Of course, if Mormont _wasn’t_ lying, the sword’s tempestuous temperament would be more understandable--the poor thing would only be about three years old, give or take.

“So long as it keeps behaving itself,” I said and leaned my head back. “Thought of an explanation as to why you’re going to be lugging around medieval weaponry?”

“Not yet,” Jon said. “But look at the bright side--if Robb continues to be a cock, I can beat him about the head with it.”

A laugh burbled out before I could stop it. I sank lower into the water, blew a series of petulant bubbles, and said with a sigh, “As much as I’d like to see that,” and with some regret, “and as much as he irritates me, I’ll admit to still loving the pillock too much to want him dead.”

“I’d use the broad side!” Jon protested, but he was laughing too as he came around the side of the tub and took up my hand. He pressed a kiss to my palm and said, “I’ve never known Winterfell to be quiet, but I think this racket takes the whole damn cake, dearheart.”

“You’re the one who wanted to come,” I said but slid over to the side of the tub to let him kiss me proper. I tilted my head up and he obliged tenderly, sliding his hand through my wet hair.

When he pulled away, he only went back far enough to press his forehead against mine. “How are you?” he asked, looking so deeply into my eyes that I felt as though he could see every tender thought in them. “Tell me true, Arya.”

I considered. He waited patiently, still holding me against himself. Finally, I decided the truth was, in fact, necessary here--I’d never quite developed the ability to successfully lie to Jon anyway and the dear man had the irritating habit of calling out any of my well-meaning embellishing.

“Irked,” I said and wound my fingers into the usual spot on his shirt, no doubt leaving a watery handmark. “Hardly frightened--I _can’t_ be, you’re here--but very irked that the grand old place has these sort of things lurking about.”

“Whoever’s doing this,” I went on, “--it’s a woman, by and by, I don’t think I got the chance to say--doesn’t feel as disruptive, shall I say, as the Storm’s End lot, but she’s certainly angry.”

“Is she a Stark?” Jon asked, the look on his face changing only the slightest bit. A tightening about his fine, sweet eyes. 

“Oh, darling,” I said at once, hearing what he was really asking. “It isn’t Aunt Lyanna.” I put my hand to his cheek. “I promise,” I said as his eyes shut in a rather bleak relief, “that if I see her, I shall tell you at once. I shall--I shall endeavor to bring you through with me.”

“I didn’t think it was her,” Jon said after a moment and took his hand out of my hair to lay it over mine. “Truly,” he said and kissed me again, just the barest brush of lips.

“If she came here,” I said softly, “it would be to see _you_ , not rip up the library and cause a ruckus.”

“Aye,” he said with a little hoarseness and pulled away to lean against the tub. “Back in the water with you,” he said after a moment. “You’re getting cold.”

He could tell better than me. I sank back into the water as he lay his arms on the tub’s edge and rested his chin on them.

“Any plans of attack rattling around in there?” he asked and tugged a lock of my hair. 

“Well,” I said, “the invisible visitor was so good as to leave me a clue. Now that you have your sword, I thought to take a poke at it.”

“And when it turns out to just be a book?” Jon asked with a little laugh.

“It’s going to be important!” I said. “It was at the top of the tower, it was _open_ \--”

“Yes,” Jon said, “it was. But we hardly live in a detective novel and I’ve never known real people to go about leaving clues _on purpose_ at the scene of the murder.”

“Oh it was hardly a murder,” I said and flecked him with water drops. 

He splashed me back a little and said piteously, “To me, it was. All those books--”

I snorted. “And no sympathy for the poor chair? It was quite disemboweled.”

“There’s a thousand chairs rattling around,” Jon said firmly. “But we’re only in possession of two copies of Thomax’s _Dragonkin, Being a History of House Targaryen from Exile to Apotheosis, with a Consideration of the Life and Death of Dragons_ , one of which was unfortunately blue.”

“I shall presently weep and rend my clothes,” I said dryly. “Summon Pia--I must assume a black visage at once.”

“Someday,” Jon said with a dramatic sigh, “you will remember your former overwhelming love of reading and the set word and I will remind you of this moment with great aplomb.”

“Yes, yes,” I muttered. “When looking at the dratted things stop making my head ache I shall pile up all the volumes in your possession and roll around atop them like a dragon on a hoard. But for the near foreseeable future and, if we are being honest, likely beyond, you will have to continue reading me the complicated bits and rephrasing them into suitably small words.”

There was a look in Jon’s eyes--the strangest things made him, shall I say, _overtly_ fond of me--as he said, “Truly a trial to be born,” and pulled me back to kiss.

We spent several agreeable minutes thus and I’ll admit, I was more than a little irritated when Pia knocked loudly at the door and said, “I’m coming in, m’lady and you and m’lord had better be decent.”

Jon, coward that he was, let me splash back into the water at once. I rolled my eyes at him thoroughly and called back, “We’re as chaste as the shyest of septas, my good woman.”

Pia’s face when she came through the door with a pile of towels and clothes said that this was clearly bunk. “If m’lord would exit,” she said as she laid out my things. 

“And if m’lord wanted to stay?” I demanded.

The look she gave me could curdle milk. “Aye, fine, alright,” I said in defeat. “We’re hardly as hedonistic as that. Go away,” I said to Jon. “Take your, ah, sword, with you, and come back with it later tonight.” I considered him--there was just _something_ about a man with a literal sword ready to swing it in your defense--and added. “The fire shall, ah, stay banked at this end. It'll keep well enough.”

“ _My lady_!” Pia said, offended.

Jon was red-faced but laughing. He gathered up Longclaw and his things presently and bowed to Pia. “Expect a holiday bonus,” he told her earnestly. “Few enough people could stand my lady’s crassness but you have always handled her admirably.”

“Out!” Pia said as she snapped a towel open. “The two of you--don’t make me light a candle to the Maiden!”

“Is that some sort of religious chastity spell?” I asked earnestly. “You see, Pia, _my_ gods are far more connected to nature and I’ll admit some ignorance to--”

The towel she was holding was summarily flung over my head. Jon fled, slamming the door shut on his strangled laughter and Pia made a disapproving noise. “Now if only you’d go to sleep like your sister’s songbirds,” she told me. “My job would be _far_ easier.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Well, it’s just that people expect a certain ambiance when you start doing these things,” I told Loras in an undertone. “Candles and wailing and holding hands around irritatingly small tables, and such.”

I’d spent an agreeable afternoon trapped in all the social moors required when one doesn’t wish to be exposed as uncannily inclined--visiting all my downstairs friends to great shrieks and tears of delight for my return, touring the minor changes to the keep, the admiring of the (frankly excessive) Seven Nights decorations, _Why, yes Jeyne_ had _done such a splendid job, Sansa_ , the scrutinizing of dark halls and corners for anything devilish and untoward.

And, alright, perhaps also avoiding the very family I had traveled so far to see.

But now it was evening, my pride had refused the idea of taking a tray in my rooms, and I was perched in sequester at the far end of the table.

We were dining en famille--none of us feeling able to bear the Great Hall--and Jon had upset the social order by sticking me at one end of the table instead of my usual middle seat. He’d then proceeded with grim determination to building up several barricades in the form of other diners, until Robb would have had to positively shout to be heard by me. 

“And that’s why you haven’t considered making a business of it?” Loras asked with his regular coupled unease and keen interest as he cut into his roast. 

Poor Loras had been ordered by General Sansa to escort me into dinner, being banned for far too polite behavior from the advancing front, where she and Jon were currently lobbying offensive attacks with daintily cold silences and dark looks, respectively.

“Ha!” I said cheerfully. The recent spiritualism movement--a response, I was sure, to all the _oddness_ cropping up after the war--was not something I put any stock in. 

“They all want some pale, stricken woman to cry dramatically and speak in tongues. Anyways,” I added with a little more truth than I was usually inclined to present--blame Robb and the wine, I was having a trying time sitting there because of one and had thus turned to the other-- “I can’t exactly _convene_ a lot of them the way those hacks pretend to. My skills lie more in, hmm--”

See, the trouble was that I didn’t exactly know what was supposed to stay a secret and what I could blather about as freely as I desired. 

It’s all well and good to be roped into a secret Braavosi death cult--I was certainly glad at the time to learn the things I was seeing despite being literally blind _wasn’t_ , in fact, brain damage--but my relatively brief initiation and training had been more along the lines of _Jolly well and good, here’s several ways not to die and also not go mad while serving as a priestess to our Many-Faced and Very-Obscure God_.

“Arya,” came my unexpected saving grace from the possible sudden need to kill Loras, “perhaps you might join the rest of the conversation. It’s hardly fair to leave Jon to recount your Grand Tour all on his own while you whisper over there.”

Mother finished folding her napkin back into place and gave me a mild but chiding look. Jon, having fully well intended to keep me out of the greater conversation, gave _her_ a frustrated look and said, “It’s alright, Aunt Catelyn. I don’t mind.”

“Oh yes,” Jeyne broke in, too, with an embarrassingly earnest look, “if she’s still feeling under the weather--”

_Gods_ , I reminded myself in despair, _she probably thinks I’ve forgotten the whole thing on account of the brain damage she thinks I have_. “It’s more than fine,” I burst, deciding now would be the perfect time to subtly correct the misunderstanding. “What were you telling them about, darling? I confess, I wasn’t paying much attention.”

“The archival library at Oldtown,” Jon said with a challenging look that said clearly, _Pray help me keep Robb from addressing you because if he does, I shall beat him to death_.

“Probably why I wasn’t listening!” I said with my best society laugh. Why not kill two birds with one mighty stone? If Mother wanted me to be more polite, I would be so damn polite she’d damn well choke on it, I decided.

Again, refer back to the wine.

“You weren’t an admirer?” Bran asked curiously from down the table. “And here I thought you’d always wanted to go.”

Hmm, confess reading made me ill sometimes? I decided I wasn’t that tipsy.

“Not enough dragons in the stories there, as it turns out,” I said. “But Jon had a grand enough visit. They had to come back three times to tell him they were locking the doors before he agreed to leave.”

“Hardly my fault they keep unreasonable hours,” Jon said, resigned to the matter.

“Well,” Mother said, attempting valiantly to look interested, “was there anywhere you did enjoy visiting, Arya? It’s nice enough to hear your stories, Jon,” she said with a passable affectation of warmness, “They’re always intriguing and well told. But I will confess, I’m hoping there’s some strange places Arya took you to.”

_Maybe if you had written to me_ , came the bitter thought as my liquored brain let it force its way in, _I could have sent a letter back and you’d already know_.

I grit my teeth. I took a breath. There was no point bringing up old business, though the tempting thought of being flagrantly rude-- _Why yes, Mother, because my interests are so very strange, aren’t they_ \--crossed my mind. 

I decided I’d had enough of the wine for now. I would certainly be feeling it for a little while--a blessing and a curse considering the evening’s planned activities--and I pushed my glass away.

“We went to the Starry Sept,” I replied demurely. “Hardly the oddest of places, but certainly the most memorable. Shall I tell you of that? The architecture was truly stunning--they’ve put some ridiculous number of jewels into the ceiling of the sept proper and when the sun goes down and they light the candles, it glows far brighter than the night sky.”

And thus the meal went on. Robb, I was pleased to see, said scarcely a word, and while Father weighed in now and then, I could tell he was waiting for the real stories, the ones we would tell to him in his study with the door shut and the brandy at hand.

But everyone else seemed to have a good enough time and by the time the last digestif was down the gullet--including mine, officially topping me off as slightly soused for the evening, damn my weakened constitution--I felt a little more prepared to parade around in the unearthly unknown. 

“Port, my boys?” Father asked as Mother rose from the table with her usual grace.

I think, as smart a man as he is, Father noticed the look Jon gave Robb, cold enough to strike a lesser man dead, as Jon said politely, “Perhaps not tonight, Uncle. Arya looks rather tired. I ought to see her off to bed.”

Hospital gown dutifully trotted out, we were allowed egress, followed shortly thereafter by Sansa and Loras.

“Are we retiring to your room?” Sansa asked as we proceeded down the hallway. 

“Ha!” I said gaily and couldn’t help the laughter that followed the stupid thought. “I’m hardly going to possibly set my bed on fire right before I need to fall into it, dear sister!”

Jon corrected my slight listing towards the corridor wall before I could crash into it and said, “Ignore her, Sansa. She’s drunk.”

“Perhaps we should delay the matter--” Loras started but I wasn’t in the mood to hear the rest.

“I am in perfect control of my particular affliction,” I announced. “We shall proceed directly to a carefully chosen undercroft that is both well ventilated and fire retardant, whereupon I shall--”

I paused. “Darling, what is the word for talking, but said in a rather grandiose manner? Convene? Contemplate?”

“Converse, dearheart,” Jon said as we started towards the back stairs.

“Yes!” I cried. “Of course! Whereupon I shall _converse_ with the artifact in question and my wonderful husband shall, if required, whack the bally thing in half.”

“Oh gods,” Sansa said weakly, having not the (ha!) spirit for the matter. “She is frightfully drunk. Jon, I really think--”

“Sansa,” I interrupted. The stairs were looming. I paused to both regain my balance and assure her. “Sansa, sweet sister, I think you will find that the application of certain spirits of more ethanolic variety will greatly aid in the perusing--”

“Pursuing, dearheart.”

“--pursuing of those spirits of the more ethereal variety. Being slightly sloshed will only exponentially increase the incidence’s chance for success.”

I beamed at her.

“Arya,” she said very slowly, like I was a particularly stupid child, “I think that doing anything in your state might cause more harm than good. If you go to bed now, we can rise early in the morning and try then.”

I clutched Jon’s arm. “I take great offence at that!” I said, possibly slight louder than I intended to. “I’ve had great successes far more impaired than this!”

“You didn’t need to drink when you were at Storm’s End,” Sansa said firmly. “I doubt you need to be drunk to do this now, Arya.”

“Yes, possibly,” I said, feeling growing irritation. “But _those_ damn things were already there all the time. I didn’t have to go toddering around after them in that horrid cold place!”

I jabbed a finger at her and said briskly, “In fact, to speak towards my success with the current method as opposed to the previous one you have just illuminated--”

“Elucidated, dearheart.”

“--yes, that, I will tell you now of the time that I first performed a crossing of the great and terrible thresh-hold with nothing but a walking cane, half a bottle of rum poured down my hatch, and the prescribed regular morphine.” I paused, misty eyed at the thought. “My sweet and dearest friend Sabine said I did very well, sending that man back where he came from with minimal fuss.”

“Dearheart,” Jon said again. “I believe that now is the time when you should shut up, if it please you.” And then the lovely, dear man picked me up and carried me down the stairs.

“Rum!” Sansa shouted from the top. “And morphine! For gods’ sakes, Arya, that could have killed you!”

I pressed my face to Jon’s chest and considered. “Should I tell her--” I began, meaning of course to end with, _that was slightly the point_ , but Jon said with emphasis into the top of my head, “No, dearheart, you shouldn’t.”

“Do you know,” I said into his collar as I reached out to pat the usual spot on his shirt, “every time you call me that, it makes me frightfully warm.”

He set me down again--we were at the pre-appointed place--and said thoughtfully, “Do _you_ know, I will now have to say it all the more?” And then he pressed his mouth to mine very softly, pulling away before I could summon my faculties to kiss back, and said, “Have courage, dearheart. I’m with you.”

The rest of our party caught up presently. I clutched Jon’s arm and attempted to take on a more serious mien. “Whatever you may see or hear,” I said darkly, swaying, “I must ask that you do not touch myself or the object.”

“Jon,” Sansa said again and the poor old girl sounded dreadfully frightened.

“Stand in the corners!” I went on. “Separately, please, and be quiet. It won’t matter in a moment, but for now, please be quiet, and I will begin.”

The object in question was lying on the stone table Jon had dragged in for me. As Jon took his sword belt and fastened it around his waist, I considered the title of blasted book, gold against the blue binding. “Summer and Spring Dreaming,” I read aloud, not touching it yet. “Traditional Songs of Westeros.”

“That is one of my song books!” Sansa cried out. “Tell me that was not the--”

“My dear lady,” I said with some irritation. “I must simply insist upon silence.”

When Sansa declined to finish her sentence, I said to Jon, “Keep hold of me?”

“Always,” he said, his whole body a fire burning so brightly in the corner of my eye. His hand at my waist was as hot as a lit coal would have been.

Enough hesitation. I would make myself do it now or I never would. With a trembling hand, I reached up, caught the veil, and tore it down upon my face. The last sound as it fell--Sansa’s gasp--and then I was beyond.


	11. Chapter 11

The pool, the water across my face. It lapped at my nose and brow and lips and dripped away down my cheeks as I lifted my head from it and stepped into the absence of air. 

A fire burned next to me. It burned red. It was the only color. A man in black armor stood inside it. He was a sentinel both inscrutable and silent. A watcher in the night. 

My god’s bridegroom was generous. 

He had given my god many gifts.

Before me was the priestess’s altar. The stone was polished dragon glass and it sucked up what little light there was.

The darkness soothed my eyes. 

On the stone altar a book lay in a shallow spill of black water. I stepped deeper.

The absence of air increased. My heart slipped in its beating and stilled. The book rot.

I was my god, I was sent for my god, and I carried my god with me. _Valar morghulis_.

My spirit was unto the dead. My eyes were unto the dead. My hands were unto the dead. My god gave unto me, so I may give unto my god. _Valar dohaeris_.

“ _Show unto me the lover of you_ ,” I demanded in Valyrian so ancient and pure that it had never left the slave pits. It was like ash in my mouth. 

Mold grew across the cover, darkly grey, and the pages shrank and curled as the binding fell away. 

“ _Show unto me that who placed you in honor_.”

A wind came from behind me and moved the hem of my veil. The pages blew into streams of fine dust. 

“ _Show unto me that face which said beloved as you were placed in honor_.”

The dust fell away. Two pages remained.

I could not read them.

Black water seeped into them and the written words ran in black inky trails. 

I touched the water and felt it become sticky and hot under my hands. The blood under the pages turned shade. It became blue. It dripped down my wrists.

I took my wet hands and put the blood across my face.

“There is no joy,” the woman cried as she came to me. She came from a corner. She came past the two swaying, featureless grey figures. “There is no joy.”

“ _Named you this book beloved? Was your hand where from came the honor?_ ” 

Her dress was black that washed to blue. Her face was long, her hair was dark. Her eyes were grey that held no true color. 

“It gave me no joy!” she cried and swept the pages to the floor. They became dust.

“ _How called are you? What name brought this lady into the house of the dead?_ ”

“No name,” she moaned and rocked back and forth. “They buried me with no name.”

“ _I know this lady’s name. Unto you I will give it, and unto me you shall answer_.”

“Yes,” she moaned. “Yes. Give me my name.”

The woman raised her hands. She tore them across her eyes, and her eyes bled blue.

“Give me my name! Give me my name!”

“ _Lady Stark_ ,” I named her.

“No!” she screamed. “Never, never!” Her hands rose as claws and raked again across her face. She tore her skin in strips and it fell to the floor as crawling worms.

“ _Daughter Stark_ ,” I named her. “ _Daughter of the House of Great Wolves_.”

“Yes,” she moaned. “Yes.” The blood fell and dripped to the floor. “That is my name. I will answer.”

“ _Why come you to this place, Daughter of Wolves?_ ”

“I lived here,” she moaned. “I lived here. They killed me here with it.”

Her face changed. It grew lines across the brow and cheek. Her dress bleached to white, running in burning lines down her shoulders to the hem. It hurt my eyes.

Her legs broke. The woman fell. Her arms twisted. Her neck snapped to the side. 

A deep dent appeared in her head and spilled blue blood down her ear and cheek.

“ _With what great weapon could such a wound be made?_ ”

“My heart,” she rasped in the harsh call of a crow. “They killed me with my heart.”

She dragged herself across the floor. Her wounded eyes turned slowly into the back of her head until they were as white as snow.

“ _So foul does death not make. Cease, lady, and rise._ ”

Her dress stained blue as she crawled forward.

“ _Cease, lady!_ ”

To my side, the warrior took his sword from his sheath, but only held it in his hand.

The woman moaned. She muttered, “Ask ask ask ask.”

The hem of my robe dragged against the stone as I stepped back.

“ _Why act you here? Why foul of this House’s rooms and walls does a Daughter make?_ ”

Her mouth opened wide and wider until her jaw dragged along the floor as she moved. “She cannot have it!” she shrieked. “She cannot have it!”

Her hands touched the dragging hem of my robe, a robe half of black and half of white. Rose canes grew from the tips of her fingers.

“Never never never!” the woman howled. The canes climbed my legs. They drew themselves tight. I panted as they crawled across me.

The first bones of the woman’s fingers broke off. She put her hands on the rose canes. She used them to pull herself up.

Her jaw drooped and broke. Her tongue flapped wetly. Her breath was rot in my face.

“No joy,” the woman said. She reached her hand deep into my mouth and down my throat. 

She drew out a rose of the deepest red.

“ _Jon!_ ” I screamed the second I could speak. “ _Jon!_ ”

The knight moved from his tower of flames. His sword was afire all down the blade and pommel. The stone wolf’s garnet eye was red as any blood. The knight swung at the woman and she retreated, shrieking.

The rose canes withered in the scorching heat. I struggled against them until I could tear my hand free and ripped the veil back off my face.

I fell through the water with great vertigo back into the land of material things and people with normal faces. Almost immediately I was falling in a more literal sense, crashing with a cry to my knees on the rough stone floor. I raked a hand across my neck, damn the last of those tightening, burrowing canes, and retched onto the floor. Something was still choking me, deep in my throat.

Jon fell beside me and drew me against him, Longclaw still burning hotly in his hand. I grabbed his arm tightly and gave a rasping, barking cough. Breath eased in, but the feeling I would be sick was rising as rapidly as my gorge.

The woman was on the far side of the table, standing against the wall, and looking as she had before. Young and sweet and pretty. “I shouldn’t have,” she said in a soft, melancholy voice, holding her hands like she cupped something precious in it. Slowly, she closed her fingers to fists and dropped crimson rose petals across the floor.

“You’re my very own,” she said to me so tenderly as I retched again, my eyes watering fiercely from the force of it. “My very own little girl.”

She walked forward, right through the table, as I hacked another cough. Jon, the dear man, was as blind as a bat on this side these things but he had his eyes narrowed as he tracked where I was looking and he left me choking on the floor as he stood again with the sword at the ready.

The woman was considerably faster. I didn’t even have time to flinch as she knelt down so close she was touching me, her knees to mine. She cupped my cheek with a cool hand. She held me still as I hacked. Her eyes were very sweet as she said, “My dearest little daughter,” and then she kissed my mouth chastely.

I threw up. Not, mind you, from the assault to my mandibles, but because whatever dratted thing that was busy clogging up my tubes had worked itself free. 

By the time I finished--oh gods, spewing out a veritable pile of blue winter roses--the woman was long gone and I was under the immediate grips of an incredibly horrible headache.

It wasn’t striking me blind, of course. So either the liquor had done its damn job, or I was getting better with the whole business of crossing back and forth.

Jon, sensing the threat was gone, put Longclaw aside carefully to burn itself to smolder and started wiping busily at my face with his handkerchief.

“Blood?” I rasped.

“Sap,” he said and showed me the sticky, yellowing smears.

Someone, probably Sansa, was crying frantically. I suppose it could have been Loras--I was hardly in fit shape to look around and see. Sounding rather like a crow myself, I told Jon, “Mayhaps better not to touch those--” and indicated the pile of roses in front of me.

The look he have me, equal parts frantic fondness and disbelief that I would think him so stupid, made me sway forward and rest my head against his shoulder.

He was so warm, I thought, as my body decided that if it was going to be alive after all than it had best get on with business. It started working shivers through itself and Jon stripped off his shirt--he was far too under dressed to offer me anything else--and tucked it around me.

“I should have brought a coat,” he said, chucked my chin, and stood. His scars were vividly red in the fiery light of the burning sword. 

The roses combusted in a satisfying manner when he touched the sword-tip to them. I chafed my shaking hands over the flames and shut my eyes a moment. The horrible pounding faded from my head as the flowers burned.

“No joy,” I said out loud, feeling a little restored. It was followed by the immediate urge to spit.

“Sansa, I don’t suppose you’d remember all the songs in that book, would you? I have it on good reason that we’ll find one of them has been torn out.”

When there was no answer, I looked up past Jon--now busy trying to coax the sword into _stopping_ burning--to Sansa’s corner. She was standing with a hand over her mouth, still shaking with sobs. Her whole face was wet but also a ghastly white.

Feeling a sinking suspicion, I turned to look at Loras and found, he too, seemed frozen in place. His eyes could have beat the size on any dinnerplate of your choice.

I’d never been one for an audience when I did things like this, so I couldn’t say exactly what they’d seen. But I suppose it answered the question as to whether or not I just stood there gibbering the whole time.

“Ah,” I said. “Well, perhaps you might help the lady, Loras? We’re done, you’re all free to move about.”

The temptation of chivalrous action knocked him right out of the fugue. He went over to Sansa’s corner, moving like a badly made robot windup, and put an arm around her shoulders.

“I suppose I had better get the book myself,” I said musingly. 

“Dearheart,” Jon said. “If you wouldn’t mind.” He had given up on reasoning with the sword--it was still spewing fire cheerfully. 

“Help me up, first,” I said, feeling the slow start of aches all over. He came over obligingly and levered me to my feet as I said to Longclaw, “Now if you can’t behave yourself, we shall simply have to leave you here overnight.”

The flames crackled louder.

“There are going to be no mythical burning weapons paraded through my house!” I told it firmly. “Think of what the neighbors would say! Why, Father would have to insist on putting you in a museum and after that, I doubt Jon shall ever get you back.”

The flames guttered a little and I pressed on the same vein. “You have never been in a museum,” I told the blasted tantrumming thing. “But I have been in several, and let me tell you there are never any nice tasty monsters there to whack in half!”

The flames went out with a sudden whoosh. “Good as gold,” Jon said, kissed my hair, and went to put the sword away in its sheath before it changed its mind.

Suddenly, from her corner, Sansa gave up the crying, buried her face into both her hands, and started laughing with great hysteria. Slowly, she slid out from under Loras’s arm and puddled herself on the floor where the great whoops of laughter continued.

I was at a loss--she’d seen the sword at Storm’s End, she _knew_ how picky and pushy it could be--so I raised an eyebrow at Loras, endeavoring to convey, _She’s your fiance, that trumps sister by a mile and a half. Please proceed with the comforting and soothing, et cetera_.

He might have gotten the message or not, but either way he turned back to Sansa, knelt down, and collected her against his chest. “Perhaps we might have a moment,” he said tightly but still politely, so I knew at once things couldn’t have been too dire.

“Have all the time you like,” Jon said graciously. He’d collected the book and now passed it to me before laying his arms under my shoulders and knees and sweeping me up. “We are very much done for the night.”

“Well if it suits _you_ ,” I said but was too exhausted to bring it to a proper snit. I laid my head against his bare shoulder, put my hand against its accustomed place on my favorite scar--lacking a shirt to wind my fingers in--and shut my eyes as he carried me out of the room.

There was a noise like scuttling further down the hallway as we entered it and turned towards the stairs. Jon paused, then hefted me tighter against himself and said, “We should look at that.” He considered, heart calm under my hand, and added, “I cannot quite bring myself to care.”

“I’ve had enough of accursed apparitions,” I said into his neck. “Proceed, please if you would sir, directly to chambers.”

“Aye,” he said, kissed my hair, and went on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, feeling a little self-conscious about this one. I'd love it if you dropped me a line letting me know if the horror part worked itself out as spooky or not. Thanks for reading!


	12. Chapter 12

Morning--well, afternoon in the most likely reality--came too soon. Our retirement the night before was colored with an air of, _Aren’t we glad to be alive, let’s make sure everything is in proper working order_ , so I was hardly in a fit state for company when Rickon threw open the bedroom window, knocking the wooden shutter into the wall with a bang, and clambered in.

I don’t know if that would have woken me up on its own, but my pillow suddenly bolting upright with a heaving chest did the rest of the job.

“What,” I said, confused, as I slid to the side.

“No,” Jon said and I squinted my eyes open to see him directing a hand from vagrant brother to window opening. Jon’s face, when I craned my neck to look at it, said clearly, _Begone the way in which ye came_.

“No,” I echoed in a groan and pulled a pillow over my face.

“You!” Rickon shouted. “You!” He followed it with several seconds of furious sputtering before shouting out loudly, “Sword! Ghost! Puking!”

“No,” Jon said again, this time louder and with greater feeling. I groaned a concurrence and pressed pillow firmer to face.

Not taking the blindingly obvious hint, Rickon made a noise like a tea kettle about to explode.

“No!” Jon said again, but now in the tone designed to stop Ghost from eating through someone’s automobile tire. “Peck!”

The door creaked open barely a second later. “Wasn’t expecting you up yet, m’lo--oh.”

“Remove that,” Jon said and the bed jostled as he flopped back onto it. “Window. Coffee.”

“Right away, m’lord,” Peck said and his shoes clattered across the floor. 

Rickon gave a furious shriek and stamped his feet like he was once again a chubby faced, spoiled two year old. It sounded considerably less cute this time.

Thereby followed the sound of furious grappling, cut off by yelping in a manner that indicated Peck had gotten hold of his ear, a small stampede of elephants, and the door shut again.

Blessed silence.

The cold air started to creep in, the covers having been disturbed. I reached a hand out and started to root around for them.

Jon levered himself upright again, jostling me mercilessly, removed the pillow from my face, rolled me over to my stomach, and covered me with himself. I grunted in plaintive appeal and he raised his arm to lay it against my cheek, blocking out the sunlight.

Order thus restored, we reclined in companionable hazes until Peck came in with the coffee tray. The chap shut the window post-haste, poured and positioned cups on the appropriate bedside tables, and left again with a crisp click of the latch.

“Holiday bonus,” I slurred from my position of being mashed into my pillow.

“Aye,” Jon said into the bunched shoulder of my nightgown.

The aroma of the promised elixir wafted through the air. My higher brain functions started clicking and whirring into place.

“Did,” I groaned into the pillow, “Rickon just climb into the window.”

“Aye,” Jon said.

“Was he shouting something.”

“Aye. S’mething about swords.”

Swords. I inhaled coffee smells. Swords. 

Swords!

I wrenched myself upright. Jon, unbalanced, slid off my back and onto the floor with a crash. “Swords!” I said, panting, and clutched my chest. “Did he-- Bloody--”

Jon's face moved from irate to a twin look of horror. He staggered upright, turning towards the door just as it swung open and I saw Peck’s concerned face over Jon’s shoulder come into view as he said, “M’lord--”

“Retrieve that back at once, Peck!” Jon shouted. “And under no circumstances let it leave again!”

Perturbed, Peck said, “Yes, m’lord,” and whisked himself away.

I groped out with a hand, took up my cup, and drank all of it down at once. Jon was similarly arming himself, grim-faced.

Visions of Rickon telling Father danced through my head. Visions of Rickon telling _Robb_. 

“Oh gods,” I said. “Oh gods. Can we-- We can say he’s gone mad. Too tired? Was he drinking last night? We’ll say he--”

Jon finished struggling into his discarded trousers from the night before, crossed the room, and unearthed my dressing gown. He flung it across the foot of the bed and said, chest heaving, “That miserable little godsdamn spying--”

Cacophonous shouting rose from the corridor outside the solar and drifted in through the half-closed bedroom door. It was impossible to make out anything meaningful, but the gist of it, I assume, was a tantrum the likes of which I hadn’t seen since Rickon first learned to walk, and then also learned that this amazing feat didn’t, in fact, make him king and absolute ruler of the world.

The solar door creaked open and then slammed shut. The shouting, now wordless shrieks, continued to mount in furious pitch as a body was slung onto one of the sofas with a crash.

“I have fought actual unholy terrors,” Jon said, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “And I would gladly fight them again if it meant _that_ unholy terror would shut his godsdamned mouth!”

Silence from the solar. My hands shaking, I set down my coffee cup and clambered out of the bed.

Peck’s head peeked around the door. “A successful retrieval, m’lord,” he said, red-faced and sweating. “And I took the liberty of sending for Pia for her ladyship’s morning medicines.”

“Thank you,” Jon managed tightly. 

“My pleasure, m’lord,” Peck said and retreated smartly, shutting the door behind himself.

“He has the biggest mouth out of all of us,” I hissed. My dressing gown was not going to be warm enough. I was still feeling the affects of last night, which is to say, I was bloody _freezing_. I threw the blasted thing aside and started digging through the wardrobe. “Anything we tell him will be all over the godsdamned keep by the end of the day.”

Jon finished pouring his second cup, shot the thing down black and still steaming, and said menacingly, “I will beat him into silence if I have to.”

As much as I loved Rickon, the thought was tempting. It was one thing for Sansa to know about our peculiar afflictions--she was the very soul of discretion and her usual crowd would hardly want to advertise the visit we had paid them--but Rickon was another matter entirely.

A matter altogether more loose-tongued.

“What did Uncle say?” Jon demanded, eyes wild. I finished tugging on my chosen sweater and dropped to the floor to finagle myself into the thickest socks known to man. “He’s obsessed with-- What, mysticism? Whoever has all those bloody mediums--”

“Spiritualism,” I said and staggered back to my feet. “Which means you know he’s got at least a dozen periodical subscriptions, a pen to write with, and the means for postage. We shall never have peace again.”

An even more horrible thought manifested itself. “Not to mention,” I moaned, “what Mother will have to say about the whole matter.”

The thought was so horrible and chilling that cold sweat broke out all over my body. The next breath altogether was a struggle, and the one after that, I found, wouldn’t come at all.

A chair asserted itself under me. I sat down under the force of the pressing hand, and stuck my head between my knees.

A clanging set of footsteps, the bang as the door rushed open, and Jon barked, “Bring Pia, now!”

Sound and sight narrowed in the same crush as someone squeezing shut an overstuffed suitcase. Someone put something frightfully cold on the back of my neck and the shock knocked another bit of air into me.

The blackness receded a little.

“--didn’t mean to--” someone was whimpering.

“You sit there and you shut up,” Jon snapped. He traded whatever was melting down my neck for another very cold thing, and I burst into a series of horrible coughs.

Hardly an improvement, but I considered the bright side. If I was coughing, I was gasping in the air necessary to bark it back out. My heart gave a single overly aggressive thump and settled back into a more sedate rhythm.

The sensation of falling through a dark tunnel ended with finality. I felt, all at once, everything that was touching my body and all the sound around it. 

“Why--” I demanded between coughs, “is Rickon in my bedroom.”

“Keep the blighter from running off again,” Jon said and removed the clump of snow from the freezing back of my neck. He replaced it almost immediately with his hot hand, and my rapid shivering abated somewhat.

Pia’s sensible shoes clicking into my narrow field of vision and she set out a bowl, followed by a kettle that was probably going to scorch a spot in the carpet, and several bottles. 

“A towel, m’lord,” she said evenly as she dumped hot water over the heinous mix of powders and syrups. 

A towel was summarily brought, draped over my head to keep the steam in, and I then spent several minutes breathing in the horrid smelling stuff while Pia laid out my usual restoratives and Jon yelled Rickon into near-tears in the solar.

Phrases like _spying little maggot_ , _have a care for the sake of her bloody heart_ , _nose out of our business_ , and _could have killed her_ featured heavily.

Finally I was allowed to sit upright again, chided into swallowing more extremely foul medicine, and then duly released into the wider world.

Rickon was, as I had predicted to myself, sitting on the floor with his head down, sniveling into his hands. Jon stood over him with his arms crossed, wearing a look I had only ever seen him direct at extremely horrible privates put under his command and grudging care.

“For gods’ sakes,” I said as Pia manhandled me onto one of the sofas. “He hardly killed me, there’s no need to be so aggressive about it.”

“Jon said you were better!” Rickon said in a sudden flood of tears. “If I’d just _known_ scaring you would make you so sick, I never would have--”

“Yes, yes,” I said, feeling the strangest mix of motherly tenderness and extreme irritation. “Come here then.”

He put his head on my knee and spent several snotty minutes soaking through the hem of my nightgown. Jon’s scowl, as the poor little thing cried, gradually softened, and finally he consented to collapse down next to me and put his head in his hands.

After several (disgusting) minutes of weeping, Rickon presented his most useful trait--being an incredibly resilient little brat--and was well enough to be prised away from my nightwear and stuck back onto the hearthrug he’d been shamed on.

He’d had his world views changed alarmingly the night before, hadn’t slept a whit if the huge shadows under his eyes were any indication, had his greatest obsession at the current confirmed with great prejudice, and had bounced back like a child’s rubber ball.

“Your stories,” he said, staring at us with stars in his eyes, “have got to be _brilliant_! Why was that sword on fire? Was that huge shadow thing going to kill you? Did Jon kill it? How come you didn’t say anything about the ghost when we were in the library? Wait! No, could you do this when we were kids? Or--Robin says everything about the war is making weird stuff happen--did it happen when you were in Essos? Were there lots of ghosts there? Did any of them come back with you? How many ghosts are _here_? Can I see one? Can I touch one? Are there any here right now? Can I hold the sword?”

I thought, personally, that he was handling the matter the best that any in the house would have, now that the shouting and tantrumming was over. Perhaps only Bran, who I felt strongly would react with his same general calm and sweetness, would have done better, but that might have been my bias towards the favorite brother.

“Yes, well,” I said and kicked a foot out to tuck up underneath myself, feeling a bit overwhelmed myself.

Jon and I shared a look that conveyed something along the lines of, _The damn horses are not only out of the barn, they’re ten towns over. We’ll have to tell him something._

“Pick _one_ question,” Jon said tiredly.

“Fine then,” Rickon said a little snottily--figuratively and literally. “How come you’ve got a big bally sword that sets itself on fire?”

Jon’s face went through several thoughts, starting with _Of course he’d ask that just to irritate me_ , passing through, _He’ll never be satisfied with a short answer--he’s a seventeen year old boy and it’s a sword_ and ending with _No, I am not going to recount to him the worst dinner party I have ever attended and how a twisted hellbeast interrupted the celebration of my legal nuptials_.

“Pick a different one,” Jon croaked. “I need more than half an hour awake and two cups of coffee to answer that.”

Rickon’s face took a turn back towards tantrum. I gave him a warning look so fierce he wilted at once. “Fine,” he said again, this time with a sniff as he wiped his nose with his sleeve, “Did you kill the ghost that messed up the library?”

“No,” Jon said. 

Rickon waited. There was no further expounding.

“We’re, ah, investigating the matter,” I said. “Sometimes ghosts don’t need to be killed, they just need to be, well…”

“Crossed through the spectral veil between worlds and sent into the great unknown?” Rickon asked with all the fervor of someone with more time to read than sense to think about what they were reading.

The words the Faceless Men used were more along the lines of, _Given over to the true end of suffering_ , but I supposed the sentiment remained the same.

“Yes,” I said dryly. “That.”

“Well, alright,” Rickon said, unconvinced. “Can I see the ghost next time? All there was last night was a great big bloody shadow hanging around and also a rather creepy voice.”

I felt a sudden rousing of interest in me. “Was that what it looked like?”

“Yeah,” Rickon said, wiping his nose again. “And the voice was, you know, coming from _you_. Kept going on about names and hearts and things people couldn’t have. Dreadful voice, too. Gave me collywobbles. Say,” he said suddenly, leaning forward to stare with great interest, “suppose it’s here haunting Jeyne and not Winterfell? It’s her stuff that keeps getting messed with.”

“That seems to be the general idea,” Jon said and left abruptly. He came back forthwith holding a handkerchief which was duly presented to Rickon. “Blow your nose. We’ll have some breakfast and then I’ll let you see the sword.” At the sudden widening of young eyes he added sternly, “ _If_ you stop asking questions.”

“For ever or for now?” came the keen voice of someone used to copious placating of himself through bribery.

“For as long as you could possibly restrain yourself,” Jon said and went to ring the bell.


	13. Chapter 13

Sansa, when I finally managed to track her down, was assisting Jeyne with even more cheerful greenery and candles and tinsel and such, strewn across the high table in Great Hall. They appeared to be piling it into other pieces of similar muck.

There was no sign in Sansa’s countenance to point towards her hysterics the night before, and the smile she offered me was one I was normally appointed. Both fond, yet slightly exasperated. 

“And here I thought that electric lights were the future,” I quipped as I pulled out one of the chairs. Lady was curled underneath the table, and she did an admirable job as a foot cushion when I sat down.

Well, disregarding the tongue which set about industriously wetting through my stockings.

“Arya!” Jeyne cried. I noticed with a glance the faint shadows under her eyes were darker, but her energy was about the same, which is to say--exhaustingly much. She brandished a beautiful pine branch at me and asked with good cheer, “Have you come to help us? We want to finish the center pieces for the Hall by tonight.”

Normally this was where guilt at my own idleness crept in, but I was far too used to these particular events, even after six years away, to be suckered in. 

“Not at all,” I said easily and removed my feet just as the poor pooch started gnawing at my shoes. I propped them up another chair and said, “I shall simply sit here and watch, I think.”

“Of course, you must relax if you are still feeling unwell,” Jeyne said, the soul of charitableness. “Is there anything I can have brought for you?”

Sansa called, from where she was cramming more candles into a centerpiece, “Arya’s hardly ill. She just doesn’t celebrate Seven Nights.”

“I--oh,” Jeyne said. She considered me with some nervousness. “You follow R’hollor, then?”

I could hardly take offense at her hesitation. People who embraced, ran into, jumped over, and attempted to swallow fire _were_ , in my opinion, something to be concerned about.

“She follows the old gods,” Sansa said. “Her and Father and Bran and Jon.” She wedged tinsel more firmly around a cluster of pale birch branches and pushed some stray hair off her face.

“Oh,” Jeyne said, less nervously.

“I’d be a grand old curmudgeon if I didn’t partake in the upcoming revelry and nonsense,” I told her and picked up a piece of pine to play with. “But you won’t catch me in the Sept and I can safely say, you wouldn’t want me putting together any of these. How many branches did I ruin that last time, Sansa?”

“You knocked a candle over and set most of them on fire,” Sansa said dryly. She manipulated a handful of pretty white feathers into her monstrosity and contemplated them with a cocked head. “Consider it a blessing, Jeyne.”

“Well, you must stay anyway,” Jeyne decided. Her face was a little worried, as she wrapped ribbon around something that had probably been living at some point. “And entertain us while we work. It would only be the sisterly thing to do.”

“An arduous task,” I said cheerfully. “Shall I sing? It is always funny when Sansa throws things at my head to make me stop. I might challenge you to riddles, or--It’s been a long while since I turned a cartwheel, but I think I can manage that if you promise to forgive the current state of my stockings.”

Jeyne laughed and put down her ribbon roll. “A little more extreme than what I had in mind,” she said, smiling. “I thought perhaps you could tell us a story. Sansa says you tell them wondrously well.”

“Of course,” I said and leaned back in my chair. The pine branch was now only suited for the fire, I thought with some regret as I brushed the shower of needles I’d plucked off my skirts and onto the floor. “Any suggestions? Hopeful influences? I have stories positively falling out of my ears, you know, it’s hardly enough just to lob that at me and hope for something you’d enjoy.”

“ _Not_ something about Robb, if it pleases you,” Jeyne said. “I am a little out of charity with him.”

“Of course,” I agreed, and then, I will admit, added with a little worry, “but I hope it’s not for my sake, sweet new sister mine. You can hardly let childish spats run influence through your marital happiness.”

“I can let whatever I like influence my marriage,” Jeyne declared as she reached for a needle. Her tone was firm--the woman had apparently made up her mind. “Denigrating a war veteran, speaking harshly with a lady, refusing to apologize about his actions, and attempting to justify his actions towards me by saying he has a temper--”

She paused, and lowered her voice again to an appropriate volume. “Pardons. The inner works of one’s marriage should remain a mystery to outsiders. I will only say this: please forgive me if I try and spend too much time with you and Cousin Jon. I do like interesting company and am used to having a lot of it about.”

“My dear lady Jeyne,” I said, “as delightful as you are, you are free to follow us room to room and settle down at our heels with my much adored dogs.”

It would, of course, give me plenty of time to scrutinize her for signs of ghostly activity if she was hanging about all day. I imagined that when Jon and Rickon were finished beating each other with sticks in the yard, I could dump her on them for a moment, sneak off with Sansa, and have out with the rest of the bloody affair vis-a-vis Robb and his running mouth.

“A fine arrangement!” Sansa said and then leaned over to whisper loudly to Jeyne, “Only be aware--Arya and Jon are one of those horribly affectionate pairs. If you’re of a mind to be scandalized by illicit hand holding, lap sitting, and cheek kissing, you ought to come visit with Loras and me instead. Perhaps,” Sansa added slyly, “you ought to tell Jeyne of how you scandalized the maids when we played cards. They were quite upset, sister.” 

I felt a little wounded. We hadn’t exactly been restrained in Storm’s End, but that was different. _Mother_ and her ever present frown hadn’t been there.

Jeyne laughed lightly. “My husband might be missish,” she said, “but I am not. A happy couple is hardly an occasion to avert my eyes.”

“See,” I told Sansa and proceeded to launch a small piece of pine at her forehead. “Perfectly normal behavior. Affection is a given between couples.”

Sansa slapped a hand to the red mark now gracing her brow and said with an attempt at dignity, “We are far too old for such games, Arya. And that aside, I have more ammunition, so if you start that up, I shall win.”

I considered my bare side of the table and her full side, and immediately agreed to a detente. “But,” I added, “just you wait until dinner, when the table shall be even between us. Are they serving oranges with afters this evening, Sansa? I would so love to recreate the last time we all ate together in the Great Hall.”

“I,” Sansa said with great dignity, drawing herself up, “am not above retaliation. We are having soup, Arya, as the starter, and if you cannot behave yourself, I will do something unmentionable to your dress. As,” she added sourly, “I should have done the last time.”

“That sounds like an interesting tale!” Jeyne declared. Her mangled center piece was nearly graceful now. I squinted at it, pondering when exactly the transformative magics had taken place. “Pray elaborate further on the matter, sister.”

“What matter? Of the time I filled Sansa’s face and bodice with orange slices, was summarily exiled to my room, and then with my alibi established fled out the window to catch the midnight train to White Harbor?”

“Was that what you were doing? Oh, you wretch!” Sansa cried, face reddening. “You ruined that dress!” She launched a spool of thread across the table at me and made to follow with a roll of ribbon.

“Ladies!” Jeyne said before Sansa could throw anything further and she shook her head as she laughed. Her face was considerably brighter. “Please! I must insist on an armistice if I’m to have the story in full. And I must insist on having the full matter. It sounds like something my own sisters would have done.”

I’d hardly had a chance to boast about my own cleverness in the matter, so I proceeded with glee. We spent several agreeable minutes such, and I was detailing the exact experience of selling all my childhood jewelry to the seediest pawnbroker in existence, when the doors to the hall opened and one of the gardener’s girls came in lugging an enormous wicker basket.

“We just cut ‘em, Lady Jeyne,” the little dear cried as she dragged the basket across the floor. She couldn’t have been older than ten or eleven and was positively smeared with dirt. “Da sent in the best!”

Halfway to the table, the handle on the basket slipped out of her hands and the whole thing fell onto the floor with a crash--cracking open the lid and strewing the finest winter roses across the rush mats.

“Oh!” the girl cried. “I’m so sorry, m’lady!”

“Not at all,” Jeyne said, rising and brushing off her own skirts. “Just leave them there, Della. I’m sure your mother needs you back post-haste.”

“Yes, m’lady,” the girl said, tipped a curtsy that she had to scramble not to fall over from, and left with a skip in her step.

“Ought to have cleaned her face, first,” I said as I stood and stretched. “Have a care for her mother--the girl was more dirt than skin.”

“Wouldn’t that have been overstepping?” Jeyne asked a little nervously. 

“Ha!” I said. “The sheer number of handkerchiefs I have dirtied scrubbing little bits clean on keep children would give you a fit of the vapors. Just give them a little smack if they squirm around too much and send them on their way when you’re done. They’re like puppies, they hardly mind so long as you’re not too rough.”

“Arya has a unique relationship with the downstairs staff,” Sansa said as she attempted to cram one last candle into place. Under the table, Lady stood up and proceeded to knock down several chairs in her haste to go investigate the spill.

“I see,” Jeyne said in a tone that clearly conveyed, _No, I do not see_. “Well, shall we gather up those poor roses? I’ve got the water waiting.”

At the closest table to the dais was several basins of cool water. “Arya, go help her,” Sansa said as she fumbled. “I nearly have it, I just need a moment more.”

Futzing about with winter roses when hardly a trial when I wasn’t hacking them up. The sweet, subtle scent of them was already filling the hall and I dismounted from the high table with some eagerness. Lady was already circling them and sniffing--none of the dogs were allowed in the hot houses for fear of them digging up and eating all the greenery coaxed into growing there.

“These,” I told Jeyne, waving a hand at the flowers, “don’t grow hardly anywhere else than in the North. They are our crowning joy and glory.”

“Yes,” Jeyne said as she trailed after me. “Blue roses. I’ve heard about them, you know. Mother seems quite fond of them.”

“Winter roses,” I said firmly. “Anyone can grow blue roses--all you need is white roses and enough dye. But winter roses only bloom in the winter, once the deep snow starts to fall. Do you know, they like the hot houses just as much as they like the snow?”

“Truly?” Jeyne asked. I bent to pick up one of the roses and hissed as it bit into my finger. A thorn--

Lady went statue-still, her tail an aggressive straight line, her ears pricked. A sound so rarely heard started to come from her. She pulled back her lips and growled.

A drop of my blood welled, held itself clingingly to my skin, and fell. 

It landed on the rush mat and turned--oh gods--blue.

Sometimes, I am just as big an idiot as my family seems to think.

“Don’t--” I started, but it was too late. Jeyne had picked up her own flower.

All the electrical lights flared and started to fall dark, one by one down the length of the hall. 

A cloud passed over the window panes. Dimness fell suddenly, in barely a breath, and Sansa shrieked as heavy pools of shadows washed from both ends of the room. Lady was barking and snarling--she rushed into the encroaching darkness and disappeared. 

The shadows were drawing in closer now, a roiling storm that cut us from the rest of the room. I latched onto Jeyne’s arm tightly and held her still as the shadows boiled and rushed across the room towards us.

They surrounded us perfectly, until the only light was the dim, flickering electric bulbs in the lamp above us. The lights flashed rapidly, dimmer each time they came on, until I could barely see Jeyne standing next to me.

All the sounds of normal life--the clatter of people passing through the corridor, the faint slam of doors, the chatter barely drifting in through the old glass windows--came to a sudden and wrenching stop. We stood in a perfect pool of silence.

“ _Arya_ ,” Jeyne whispered, and her face was a white circle in the dark. Her nails bit into my arm as she grabbed me back. “Arya, what--”

A step sounded in the dark around us. Boot heels on stone. A single rose, kicked by the walker, skittering out of the shadows and came to rest at Jeyne’s feet.

“Who dares,” a woman said in a soft, breathy voice. “Who dares to pick _my_ roses?”

Jeyne stuttered out a whine, and I held her closer. “Shh,” I barely breathed into her ear. The thick scent of her perfume mixed nauseatingly with the increasing scent of wet rot.

“Who dares!” came a scream liable to rip someone’s ears off. 

Jeyne was trembling like a cornered animal, panting in harsh little breaths. 

The footsteps circled us slowly. Something was dragging, slick and heavy, on the floor as the ghost walked. The steps paused right behind us, and all the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

The ghost breathed wetly. I thought about the vision of the night before--that cruelly twisted body--and couldn’t help but imagine how it would look not freshly dead, but some two or three weeks on.

The thought that I might turn around and see for myself could hardly be borne. “Shh,” I said in Jeyne’s ear again. “Shh.”

Could the darkness that hid us from the world hide us also from the ghost? My hands were trembling--it would have been unfair to attribute all the shaking to Jeyne. We clung together like frightened children.

Something moved in the corner of my eye. My gorge rose rapidly. “ _Don’t_ ,” I breathed to Jeyne, barely a sound at all, “ _look_.”

A hand--oh gods, could it even be called a hand it was so rotted--tucked a winter rose with sweet tenderness into Jeyne’s hair.

“You dare,” the ghost sighed. “Whore.”

Jeyne screwed her eyes tighter and whimpered.

“Whore,” the ghost said again, and her footsteps clicked away again.

“Whore!” she screamed rawly from the shadows.

“Whore!” she shrieked so loud that we jumped at the noise.

“Whore,” came her voice louder than the largest thundering artillery units. “Whore!”

“No joy!” she wailed, now from right behind us, and Jeyne and I both cried out. “No joy! No joy no joy no joy no joy!” 

The ghost gibbered like a mad woman until her words lost all meaning and became a snarl.

“Nojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoy--”

“Oh gods,” Jeyne wept as the snarl rose from all around us, pressing on our ears. It rose in pitch and fervor until I thought I’d go mad from it. “Oh gods.”

“--nojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoynojoy--”

I couldn’t spare my arms to hold Jeyne any longer. I clapped my hands over my ears to stop the horrible raving, bent under the force of the malice in the shrieked words.

And then a sound cut the air.

It started out small, the noise, and hung about us like the sweetest perfume. A soft, throaty warble that cried so pure and true that the shadows and the silence couldn’t touch it.

The sound deepened. Now it came from the chest, a single firm note that cast the lamp above us into brightness again, a fierce yellow light falling across our faces.

Lady was singing and as she sang, the darkness was forced back from us--one trembling inch, then two.

The ghost screamed wordlessly, enraged.

In the distance, through the shadows and the silence, came a second howl so high and fierce, nearly a scream itself. Then a deep note joined it, and held the sound. An ecstatic yowl, chopped into enthusiastic bursts, sailed through the air, and another pure note rose at the highest pitch yet.

The five note song burned the air--the ghost screamed back again, but fainter, and the song held firmly against it, until the scream was lost entirely to the noise.

Jeyne lifted her head, the deep tension on her face easing as she listened. As she did, the rose from her hair fell and as the soft brush of it hit the floor, light came back so suddenly it was like flashing lightning.

The danger gone, the pack stopped singing.

Jeyne collapsed almost at once, so white she could have been carved from snow. I tried to arrest her fall and only succeeded in crashing to the floor alongside her. My elbows and knees ached fiercely as I scrambled back into a sitting position and took her hands.

There! Just around her--a lingering, fluttering piece of silk. Just as it started to fade back into air I grasped the corner and ripped it off with prejudice.

I only managed to wrench a piece of it away. The rest disappeared before I could make a second attempt.

A scrap of ribbon so old it was nearly crumbling fell from my hand to the floor. It, ah, slimed a little on the way down. Sap coated my fingers and palm--the ensnaring scent of rotting roses fell all around us as Jeyne struggled to breathe.

“What--” Jeyne gasped. “What--”

“Sansa,” I begged. “Help me, I can’t lift her on my own.”

Sansa descended in a panicked clatter. Between the two of us, we managed to cram the lady Jeyne into a chair. Lady the dog was panting harshly now and snapping at the corners of the room. She came to us, shied away from where we had been standing, and rushed to bay at the doors.

“Let her out,” I told Sansa as I bent Jeyne’s head over her knees. “Best position for shock, my lady,” I assured her and attempted to fumble some mild hair stroking. “You just focus on breathing and all that rot for now.”

The baying streaked down the hall and disappeared from hearing. Sansa came back, pale herself, and giving the scattered roses a wide berth. “Perhaps, ah, something different for the lower tables,” she said nervously, white limning her eyes.

“I’ll take them down to the crypts later,” I said blankly. The place where flowers went to wither and die. It would present the perfect time for some light snooping through those cool and dusty warrens that housed the long dead remains of House Stark.

Maybe there was a leak somewhere in the stone tunnels, and maybe in the spreading black water, something was rotting.

Jeyne made a low noise of distress, and I patted her back consolingly. “There, there,” I ventured a tad stiffly. The ragged animal sounds didn’t stop. “Ah, Sansa,” I tried helplessly, “perhaps--”

She gave me a look of such amused disgust that I was offended, but put her own arms around Jeyne and shushed her. “Why don’t we go up to my solar,” Sansa soothed. “It’s much more comfortable there. The fire is so nice and warm, and I will have someone bring up Grey Wind.”

“Yes,” Jeyne rasped. She shoved her hair off her sweating face and offered a gruesome attempt at a smile. “I have-- I must have fainted from lack of sleep and had a horrible dream.”

“Ah,” I said. Words wouldn’t come. “Mayhap--”

Sansa gave me a look, and shook her head. “Come here now, sweetling,” she said, helping Jeyne up. She turned the good lady’s head away before she could see the roses again and they limped out of the hall together.

It was, I decided swiftly, the better part of valor to let Sansa work her magic and eek some details out of Jeyne before I rejoined them. But until then, I had a strong feeling that I could hardly leave the roses lying where they were, where any unsuspecting poor soul could come along, snatch one up, and receive possibly the worst shock of their lives.

The bit of ribbon was still tacky to the touch. I wrapped it carefully in my handkerchief and stowed it away for later examination. And then, with some trepidation, I picked up another rose.

It remained a flower. No encroaching darkness, unwell voices, ominous visions. No clues as to why a Stark was haunting my new goodsister. I gave it a shake, just to be sure, and a petal fell off, much in the way petals tend to fall off flowers that are being aggressively shaken.

“Well,” I said, out loud, “at this point, that’s just rude of you.”

“Rude of who?” Bran asked and I launched the flower across the room with a shriek.

“No!” I said, once my heart stopped going so loudly I heard it in my ears. I jabbed a finger towards his amused face. “Absolutely not! No more sneaking, creeping, or stealthily rolling! I’ve had enough shocks for the day, thank you! The adrenaline shop is _closed_.”

“Arya,” Bran said, both amused and concerned, “I knocked at the door. I said your name.” He gave me a more scrutinizing look and murmured, “Are you well?”

“If,” I said, still gasping a little, “people would stop giving me horrible shocks, I will be as well as--”

The phrase escaped me. “--as something that’s well,” I managed and sank down onto the nearest bench.

“As right as rain?” Bran prompted calmly.

“Yes, that,” I told him, irritated. “Did you need something, or were you just creeping around waiting to startle and upset innocent victims?”

I kicked a rose near my feet and sent it skittering back towards the basket from whence it came.

“I wanted to see you,” Bran said and rolled himself closer to me. His hair was starting to sprout itself back out of the tonne of pomade he’d used and was industriously working itself into the normal unruly curls. Despite the new height and minor scruff on his chin, he still looked about thirteen years old.

He pushed a strand of hair off his forehead and said gently, “Jon told me about your latest scare.” 

I goggled. Bran was not in the know! Jon himself was hardly all knowing, and we had been accosted by the ghoul literally only minutes before.

“Apparently Rickon thought it was appropriate to climb through your window this morning?” Bran elaborated in that same mild, gentle tone. “Jon thought you could do with some more level-headed company after that.”

“Oh gods,” I said thankfully. Rickon knowing was trying enough on my poor nerves.

And then--

“Oh gods,” I groaned. The nerve! For the dear man to think I was going to pop my damn clogs at any moment! For him to think I needed coddling! “He’s sending _outside agents_ now? Go and tell my damn husband I’m fine, thank you very much.”

“Well, if that’s how you feel about--” Bran said back in a distinctly snarky tone and then paused.

I gave him an irritated look. “What?” I demanded as I heaved myself back up and chucked a rose properly into the basket. “Go on, go give him a satisfactory report, and then we can actually talk.” 

It would, in fact, give me time to pop down to the crypts and then back out again. There was an extremely small chance one of the statues was wearing a sign that read _Here lies your mysterious ghost_ , but there might be something.

I would take anything at this point, if only it meant people were no longer being harassed into turning the color of unfinished cheese.

“He’ll just fret himself into an early grave if you leave him hanging like this,” I told Bran faintly, mind far off from what was coming out of my mouth.

Several more roses were restored to their proper wicker cage. I bent backwards and popped my back with a groan, feeling my lungs open up significantly as I did. 

“Arya--” Bran tried, sounding like he was in the grips of some strong emotion.

“Bran,” I said and tossed another rose aside. Gods, how many of these damn things had the gardener and his tiny associates plucked? The bushes must be near bare.

I had held that first bloom just fine. The lady ghoul had only apologized last night because I was a Stark. _Her own dear daughter_. But we would have surely heard if the hot house workers had been bothered when they clipped the flowers. But the gardeners weren’t Starks. But Jeyne was a Stark now, too…

“Arya--” Bran pressed.

“ _Bran_ \--” I mocked absent-mindedly, mind spinning faster, but wheels finding no purchase. 

Bran huffed, aggravated. He leaned over the side of his chair and picked up a rose. I tensed, expecting more abnormal activity, but it remained a slightly mangled flower and a slightly irritating brother.

“So how did he propose?” Bran asked, sniffing the dratted thing.

“How did who what?” I demanded, hauling the basket to a slightly more convenient spot. I will admit, at this point, to not quite listening as I tried to work out a maths problem with too many letters and not enough numbers.

“Jon.”

“Jon what?”

“Arya!” Bran cried in that familiar old whine. 

“Honestly, Bran,” I chided and forced myself to focus in the present. I scooped up the last enormous armful of blooms. “If you want to ask me something, just come out and ask it. We’re all friends here, no need to go dancing around the bush.”

“Fine,” Bran said, mulishly. He jutted his chin out and demanded, “Arya, my dearest sister, how did Jon propose to you?”

A sense of foreboding crept suddenly up my spine. It was the distinctly familiar feel of being backed into a corner while unawares. “Ah,” I said. “What. Ah, what makes you think anyone’s proposed to anyone here? Nonsense and rot, Bran! We’re merely gadding about sowing our wild oats and all! Just a little tete-a-tete! Calls of the body are not to be denied and what not! Marriage not needed or wanted--I’m sure you’ve heard Mother expounding heartily on the matter!”

“Yes?” Bran asked. “Interesting.” He twirled the infernal rose around his fingers and said, smiling, “Because I could have sworn you just called him your _husband_.”


	14. Chapter 14

“I just don’t see--” Bran huffed as I slung another armful of roses onto Aunt Lyanna’s bent knees, “--just what the problem is with coming clean about the whole thing. It’d be a shock considering your very loud views on the matter but being married isn’t exactly scandalous.”

He squinted at me through the gloom and smiled encouragingly. “I personally feel as though I should have expected it. A secret wartime wedding--well it’s just the sort of thing you and Jon would do.”

I hardly knew how to respond to that. “What?” I demanded, “What, because we’re both horribly secretive people who live to make our family’s lives difficult?”

“No, no,” Bran reassured me, but it hardly put me in a more charitable mood.

I knew, logically, that Bran would never imply that but this was a topic I couldn’t seem to think about with anything other than sheer foolhardy emotion. “No,” I demanded. “You’ve already started! Come out and say it!”

“You’ve just always been very private people,” Bran soothed. He held his palms out like he was approaching a feral animal and I sniffed at him unhappily. “I could count on my hands the times you dealt by yourself with some manner or other to avoid vexing anyone but I’d run out of fingers too quickly.”

“It’s called being self-reliant,” I grumped. “And it’s a very desirable trait, I’ll have you know!”

“Yes,” Bran agreed mildly. He rolled his chair a scant inch closer and peered up at me. “There’s nothing wrong with it, Arya. I just thought it seemed like the sort of arrangements you and Jon would put together. Something small and private.”

He paused, his smile faltering. “I suppose I had hoped you’d invite me in on the secret,” he said plainly. “Don’t,” he said as I opened my mouth to protest, “start. I’m not hurt you didn’t, Arya. Truly. But don’t you think it’s time you let your family know?”

“Well, I just don’t see how it’s any of your business!” I huffed back. “Good gods, don’t you have anything else to stick your nose into?”

“Hodor,” Hodor said chidingly from his position pushing Bran’s chair along the uneven floor.

“Yes, exactly, thank you,” I said and shoveled another heap of roses onto the stone lap. “You worry about someone else’s marital affairs and leave mine well enough alone.”

Aunt Lyanna was now drowning in winter roses and the air had lost its usual mineral sharpness and cool dirt scent. Her serene smile, mysterious as it always was, took away some of the sharp anger I felt.

“I’m hardly ashamed,” I assured her statue in an undertone. “It’s just complicated is all.”

There was no response which was probably for the better.

I dragged the basket further down the row and tossed a few onto Uncle Brandon’s lap. “You don’t get near so many until you make your namesake develop some discretion,” I told his smiling face sternly. “When Bran the Little behaves, I shall bring you more.”

“Oh that is a low blow, Arya,” Bran squawked behind me.

“Yes, well, so is disclosing any personal information I told you in a moment of shock and distress,” I snapped. The basket wasn’t near enough to empty. I hauled it down to Grandmother Lyarra and passed her a few blooms.

“I’m not going to go about telling anyone!” Bran protested futilely. “I just want to know--why hide it all this time, Arya? Father would be so pleased.”

“Yes, I imagine he would be the only one,” I muttered to myself sourly, and made myself hold still instead of dashing off to avoid the whole damn conversation. “It’s _complicated_ , Bran. The whole damn matter.”

He hadn’t been much involved in the, ah, discussion that followed my decamping to Braavos, so I could hardly blame him for not taking into account the sheer vitriol expressed at the time.

“I happen,” Bran said gently, “to be very good at uncomplicating things. In fact I’m considering taking a job in the matter. Bran the Untangler they’ll call me. Bards will come hailing from across the lands to sing about the matter. It’ll become the North’s most famous song.”

There was an empty pedestal at the end of the row, no doubt created under Father’s provisions for the day we inevitably stuck _him_ down here. Mother could hardly say no if the statue was already ready to go up. I sank down onto it and put my head in my hands.

“If it’s Jon--” Bran said after a moment, but so hesitantly I knew he didn’t believe a single word he said.

“Ha!” I said morosely. The thought was laughable. “Jon hardly gives a damn who knows. He would shout it from the rooftops if I asked him to. No,” I said with a huge sigh, “He left it up to me to decide who to tell, and I decided, well--”

Trepidation and resentment clawed at me in turn. I felt cornered, and fiercely protective at the same time. “It’s _our_ business,” I said. “No one else’s.”

Bran had been my most faithful correspondent during the war, but after Ny Sar, I hadn’t written to anyone, not even him. The nurses kept offering, Sabine kept offering, Jon offered enough times to drive me insane, but I was just so tired of everyone going about fussing themselves into my own damn business.

Everyone sent me so many letters, but I still hadn’t received the damn one I _wanted_ , and it twisted me up so tightly that I would have marched right back into the hellish gas clouds before I sent off any of my own news.

Bran looked at me so gently in the wavering light from the oil lamp. “It’s complicated,” I said again, helplessly. Bran just didn’t understand--he couldn’t--and that was through no fault of his.

It was a bitter drink to sip at, all that continuous disappointment and anger and well-meaning, delicately-handed _managing_. The good intentions. I was glad it wasn’t a cup Bran knew at all.

There had been--there _was_ \--just enough poison brew in it for two.

“Hodor,” Hodor said and came around Bran’s chair to offer me a winter rose. He patted my shoulder softly when I took it.

“Yes, yes,” I said and put my face into the bloom. Under the cover of the enormous open petals, I dashed away the wetness in my eyes.

“Alright,” Bran said after a moment, conciliatory. He truly was my favorite brother. “Alright, Arya, I won’t push anymore. I’ll just say--congratulations.”

“You’re about four years too late,” I said, sniffling sullenly. “But thank you.”

“Four--”

Bran made a noise in his throat similar to the commotion Rickon had been emitting this morning. “Arya!” he shouted. “I ought to smack you, sitting on it that long!”

I huffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve. “It was _private_ ,” I said. “Don’t get so cross, you’re hardly the only one in the dark about the matter.”

“Here now,” came a voice forcing itself to be jolly. “In the dark about what?”

Robb peered around Hodor’s hulking mass and raised an eyebrow at me. _Gods be good_ , I thought as I grit my teeth, _I ought to pray more. I’ve clearly fallen out of favor_.

“It’s a crypt,” I said acidicly. “Everything is in the damn dark.”

“Ah,” Robb said, as the wind went about letting itself out of his sails. “Well, busy with something, then?”

“Yes,” I snapped. “Bran and I are, in fact, busy.” I waved my rose at him and then encompassed the crypts in general with another sweep of my arm.

“Good, good,” Robb said, cringing. “Thought you could use a hand. Too many of those and you’ve got light work. Good, ah, for the dark.”

The pun dangled itself above a precipice, lost hold of the edge it was grabbing, and fell to its flat death.

Robb’s face said clearly and painfully how awkward this was for him. I was not so good a person as to be above enjoying the experience.

“Robb,” Bran sighed, and put his head in his hands.

“So, ah, Arya,” Robb tried, persistently pushing along. “How are you?”

“Do you know,” I said to Bran in a loud aside, “this is the strangest apology I’ve ever gotten? See, I might just be naive about the whole matter, having done nothing wrong in my life, but I thought the dratted things usually started with, oh, something along the lines of _I’m sorry_.”

Bran’s heaved sigh turned into snickering.

Robb looked like I had stabbed him. He closed his mouth, slowly, and then opened it again to mutter, “Suppose I deserved that.”

“Yes,” I said plainly. “You deserved that and worse. So tell me what you want, Robb, before I decide to serve up another heaping helping of something hurtful.”

“Ah,” Robb said and shoved his hands through his hair. He gave me a hopeless look, then admitted. “I wanted to talk to you. Mayhap--” and here he paused to wet his lips nervously, “--mayhap without an audience?”

“Hodor,” Hodor said grimly.

“I agree with my friend,” Bran said and stretched. “I doubt Jon would like that _at all_.”

Irritation clawed up my throat. “Well it’s a good thing Jon isn’t my keeper,” I snapped. “Goodbye, Bran.”

“Arya--” Bran tried to appeal, startled.

I grit my teeth hard enough to wear off a sheer layer of enamel. “ _Good bye, Bran_. Please take your medieval attitude with you when you leave.”

“Oh, fine,” Bran said, knowing very well he was nowhere near as stubborn as me. “You’d better watch your tongue, Robb,” he said tartly. “Father’s Night is just tomorrow.”

“Aye,” Robb managed, and then stood still and silent as Hodor wheeled Bran away.

“Well,” I snapped when they were gone, “you might as well make yourself useful. Take that basket and follow me.”

He heaved up the basket without complaint. I considered for a moment, and very seriously might I add, making him lay out the roses, too. Getting ghosted could hardly be a bad punishment for whatever half-hearted apology I was about to endure.

But in the end, the thought of fighting off another swarm of shadows _and_ then having to console Robb through his inevitable nervous breakdown--without even Sansa nearby to lend a hand--overruled my mean thoughts.

We walked right past Grandfather Rickard--I didn’t like the man very much, for Aunt Lyanna’s sake--and down the gently sloping floor into the older levels.

Water dripped somewhere, a tiny little patter of noise. I scraped my shoe across the dirt and passed from the narrow, curving hall into the vaulted level beyond.

Robb followed me, silent but for the little huffs of breath he let out as he lugged the basket along.

“You might as well go ahead and tell me,” I said darkly as I lavished roses across the many varied laps of my ancestors. “But you just remember, I know the crypts better than you do, and I have the only light.”

“Aye,” Robb said again, more hoarsely. He paused for a long moment as we proceeded along towards the darker, dustier tombs.

“Well?” I demanded, impatiently. _Gods spare me men who want to talk just until they’re given leave to do so, at which point they turn into veritable hunks of stone_.

There was a clunk as Robb set the basket down. The oil lamp did strange things to his face--made it look older, more haggard. “Can we sit?” he asked. “Please, Arya. Just sit and talk for a moment.”

I wanted to stay mad at him--I did, damn it, he had hurt me badly--but there was something about how he looked in the light. Someday my poor, idiotic brother would be Lord of Winterfell, and someday beyond that someday he would be as the people were around me--stone statues sitting in the dark.

“Fine,” I huffed, and pulled myself up onto the corner of nearest the tomb. Whoever rested behind me could hardly care--generations of Stark children had spent their childhoods scrambling, shrieking, hiding, and playing through the place while their ancestors looked on benevolently, swords at the ready across their old stone laps.

Robb stayed standing, and started to pace about after a moment. “I shouldn’t have said it,” he said as he walked. “And I didn’t-- you _know_ I didn’t mean it, Arya. But to have you go swanning about pretending the whole damn thing didn’t happen, that you’re not still--”

He paused, and cleared his throat before proceeding in a decidedly calmer tone. “I don’t like it,” he told me, “that you try to pretend you’re as you were.”

“Yes, well, I don’t like being told what to do,” I said, feeling my anger start to climb again. “But it hardly gives me leave to start throwing around absurd and hurtful accusations, brother mine.”

“Aye,” Robb said again and turned away from me. Even through his heavy coat, I could tell his shoulders were pulled taut as a bridge wire. “I’m sorry,” he said plainly, painfully. “I’m sorry for what I said.”

Just that, with no strings attached at all.

 _Mayhap_ , I thought absurdly, _Jeyne has been good for him_.

“I accept your apology,” I said, still a little stunned. “I don’t forgive you yet, but I accept it.”

Robb nodded, not turning around. The silence was thick--he clearly wasn’t done yet.

“I wasn’t there,” he started slowly. “Did you know? Did Father ever say--”

He blew out a huff of tired air, and an uneasy feeling started to creep up my spine.

“Did Father ever talk to you about what it was like, when the damn thing came?” Robb asked. His hands were tight fists at his side.

Ah. “No,” I said nervously. “We had better things to talk about. But that’s all in the past now, Robb, and I hardly see the need to dredge--”

“Jeyne and I were in Wintertown,” Robb went on flatly, talking right over me. “Shopping for something. A new coat for her, mayhap? I can’t remember now. But I _do_ remember how still everyone went on the street when Father had the bells rung. The bells in the Old Bell Tower,” he added hoarsely. “The iron ones.”

Panic clawed at my throat. I didn’t want to talk about this--I hardly ever wanted to even _think_ about it. I wasn’t in fit shape at the time to spare the thoughts when the matter came out, and it didn’t seem relevant to think about afterwards. When everything had already been straightened up.

“Yes, yes,” I said curtly and tried to rise. “They rang the bells, people went about wailing, et cetera. Look, Robb, everything’s forgiven and forgotten, alright?”

“Arya,” Robb said, and I was damned surprised to realize that his voice was wet. “ _Please_ ,” he told me, and staggered forward to prop himself up against the tomb in front of him. Like he needed the support to get through it.

The crypts seemed to echo it back to me, that little plea for my time. For my attention toward the matter. For my mercy.

Mercy was a gift I was now skilled in giving. It came to me so instinctively now that I had sat down again before I even thought as to what I was doing.

“Fine,” I muttered. “You want to hash out the whole damn matter? Go ahead.”

Robb pushed out a pained breath and bowed his head. He told me, “It was on the floor when we made it back. The paper--the telegram. No one seemed to want to touch it. Like if we could all ignore it, it would make it untrue.”

Before my eyes, I saw the feared words as Robb recited them from almost perfect memory.

“The Surgeon Major General wishes me to express his deepest regret that your daughter Second VAD Nurse Arya--” _Snow_ “--Stark was killed in action on twenty second of Quintilis at her post in Ny Sar. Letter to follow. Surgeon Major Shaemidon Antaryon BHMC.”

He stopped, and swallowed hard.

“I will never, _never_ not remember that,” he went on in a whisper. “Or the way Mother looked. Father _cried_ , Arya.”

“Yes,” I managed to allow him, feeling my own irritation climb. “I’m sure it was a horrible shock. But that mix up was hardly my fault, and besides, it clearly wasn’t true.”

“For a month, it was,” Robb told me tiredly. “Did they tell you that was how long it took before the news came out? You were gone, you were _dead_ and there was nothing we could do about it. It’s yours, you know,” he added harshly. “That empty pedestal in the first vault. Father had it made for you.”

There was lots of dust in the crypts. Some of it, I’m sure, had been stirred up by us walking along. Some of it was catching in my eyes. Some of it was making it difficult to suck in another breath.

“I know it wasn’t as hard as being the one in the hospital bed,” Robb said to the shadows lying ancient and watchful past the warm haze of the lamp light, “but it was hard enough for us. For me. Dealing with all those matters--they wouldn’t give us your paperwork, wouldn’t let us have your will. Wouldn’t even tell us if there would be anything to send home. A-- A _body_ we could bury.”

I felt the sting in my throat. It took everything I had to keep my mouth shut and not spit out, _Of course they wouldn’t tell you, it wasn’t your right. I changed my paperwork after Mother’s last letter arrived. I took a different name. All that was my business, mine and Jon’s. Not yours_. 

“There was nothing I could do,” Robb said. “All that work--helping Father however I could, trying to keep Mother from going mad, trying to explain things to Rickon--was the only thing that kept _me_ from going mad. Because I spent the whole damn time knowing that no matter what I did, my stupid little sister was never going to come back!”

Absurdly, I felt a little wounded. An uncharitable thought percolated in my mind, knocked about by Robb’s riling. Before I could help it, the damn thought slipped out of my mouth and into the air. “ _Jon_ knew.”

The muscles in Robb’s back tightened even further. And I supposed I deserved whatever thing he was about to tell me--Jon had known through a very special, ah, dispensation. It was unfair to think that the rest of my family had simply rolled over and accepted my death; it was unfair to think that they should have had a little more faith.

“Jon’s mad,” Robb said flatly. He was sliding rapidly from sadness into anger now. “Gods, Arya, he’s always been mad when it comes to you. If there was even a single shadow of a doubt, he would have believed it. He would have gone to Ny Sar himself to dig through the bodies. He would have gone to the bloody _moon_!”

“You two,” Robb said, and ground his forehead against the stone. “You damn two. I told him, you know. When he wouldn’t let Father get him out of his damn enlistment. I told him that he had better act smart then, before you shipped yourself across the damn sea and joined him.”

That same old anger sparked and caught fire. What was the point of constantly having the same argument when none of them ever actually listened? I slid off the tomb and to my feet.

“You know, it’s funny how everyone still thinks that!” I snapped. “Jon, Jon, Jon, like he’s the only damn thing that matters to me. I love him, aye, but I didn’t follow him across any bloody sea! I went because it was the right thing to do, Robb!”

“Because I couldn’t sit at home anymore reading about half of Myr being bombed out of existence! About Volantis under siege as people starved in the streets and killed each other for bread! About the godsdamn Asshai’i turning war into hell with their godsdamned chemical factories!”

“Couldn’t sit there like _me_ ,” Robb snapped back.

“Aye,” I said darkly. “Aye, fine, if you want to have this conversation again. Sure, like you. Safe at Winterfell, pretending all of Essos wasn’t going to ruin. Pretending our Northron lads weren’t being marched off to die there. Lords and ladies have a _duty_ , Robb. To our people. We _owe_ it to our people.”

“You always did listen to Father too much,” Robb said and turned around. His eyebrows were drawn down crossly and his eyes were traitorously red as he scrubbed at them. “But Mother raised you too, Arya! You can’t just stand there and pretend she didn’t. _Family_ , duty, honor. Only one of those comes first.”

“Family!” Robb shouted at me, his whole face red, and threw his arms about. “Keeping our family safe! Keeping our family whole!”

“Family,” I said coldly, “doesn’t give the doctors any more nurses, and it doesn’t give the nurses any more medical supplies. It doesn’t give the soldiers bullets and rifles and rations and warm clothes! It doesn’t give the refugees a place to go, or put ships in the sea to fish out all the damn mines. Family’s all well and good, Robb, but all it really matters is to the people in it. Our duty is beyond that.”

“And if you had ever actually stood on a battlefield,” I said, nearly panting with the force of my own emotions, “or comforted the dying, or had to figure out what to do when there was no morphine left, or disinfectant, or bandages, and the bombs just kept coming closer and all the planes above were only Tyroshi blue and green, and you and your friends were boiling your clothes all together for something to keep pressure on the wounds because the soldiers dying later of sepsis was barely better than them dying of blood loss now--”

If he had been there, I felt certain Robb would have understood. What were softer feelings like _family_ worth against the piled up dead? Against the wounded and the dying I had been assigned to shepherd into whatever peace I could find for them?

“It’s always duty,” I said, feeling hot tears trace down my cheeks. “Always, Robb. Maybe you, maybe _Mother_ can’t see that.”

I couldn’t bring myself to stay any longer. “Put those roses on the tombs,” I croaked out, embarrassed at my crying. “And then go back up. I trust you can find the way. I have other things I need to do.”

I left the lantern on the ground for him to see by and left the crypt at as near a run as I could manage.

I didn’t know where I wanted to go--just away, somewhere warm and clean, somewhere I could climb out of my own skin. The door to the Godswood was open and I slipped inside, half tripping over the tree roots. My damn eyes kept welling up, making it difficult to see.

A large, furry body crashed into me, and I went sprawling. Nymeria whined frantically, and I rolled over to let her lick my face. Ghost was accosting my other side, pawing at me and snuffling all over my clothes.

“Alright there?” Jon called as he picked his way over. “They’ve been missing us--the kennel’s hardly as hospitable as a bedroom.”

And then he was kneeling down to help me up, but I desperately didn’t want him to see the tear tracks. I turned my head away, trembling, when his warm hand cupped my face.

“Dearheart,” he said, alarmed.

“I can’t,” I croaked and covered my face. “I can’t.”

“Alright,” Jon told me, “Alright, no, shh,” and hefted me up. He took me to the heart tree, to the place we had huddled as children, comforting each other, easing those little wounds we had received. The air smelled like a thousand thousand years of deciduous confetti, like snow and the sulfur from the pool of black water, like the familiar, fragrant weirwood sap that dripped down from the mighty face as the blood red leaves rustled above us.

Jon held me and rocked me a little, until my frantic breathing petered out into something calmer. I pressed my face into his chest, my hand fisted in his shirt.

Gods, and wasn’t Jon just more Mother’s child than I was. He might as well have her House words tattooed on his heart. He’d blackmailed, he’d threatened, he’d abandoned his own post to claw his way across Essos to my side when I needed him the most.

And still that little voice inside me that spoke with the soft rustling of the weirwood leaves insisted, _Duty comes first_. 

We had never spoken about it. But I had thought about it, gods, nearly always when the nurses finally chided him away at night and I was alone again. But I couldn’t--

There must be something wrong with me, more than the usual, to sit on my husband’s lap and know that I never would have left Ny Sar if the tables had been turned. To know that I _hadn’t_ left, not even when they stopped sending the trucks back, and the writing on the wall became clear.

Half the damn VAD nurses had left their patients and legged it out across the fields ahead of the coming battle, and all I had done was thrown my gas mask around my neck before I went to the next man.

For whatever good it had done me. For whatever good running had done them. Not much, in the end, either way. The gas had rained down on all of us all the same. But I hadn’t known that at the time, when I chose to stay. I hadn’t even _tried_.

I rasped, “You must hate me sometimes.”

The warm hand rubbing my back stilled. It couldn’t be done, to lie in front of a heart tree. Not even to yourself.

“I didn’t leave,” I said quietly, listening to the soft beating of his heart. “Not even when I had the chance. Gods, how can you still--”

I had been so lucky. I had never even thought that beating heart, so dear to me, had stilled. I had never even considered--not even in a dream. The telegram had come to him, not me, when the coin had finished flipping and fallen on its side.

I had never had to face a single moment in which I didn’t believe Jon Snow was alive. And what kind of gift had I given him in return, that he’d had to read about my name on the dispatch papers?

That he’d found it on the list of casualties?

“How can I still what?” Jon breathed into my hair, so careful of me even if I didn’t deserve it.

“Love me,” I confessed painfully. “I stayed there, I _let_ it happen. How can you still love me after that?”

Jon shifted me, carefully, until I could look up at him. His eyes were so dark and fierce as he cupped my cheek. “Who’s done this?” he demanded furiously, all that fire burning on my behalf. But I only shook my head and pressed my face to his chest again.

“I couldn’t do it,” I told Jon wearily. “Family, duty, honor. Only one can come first,” I said, and heard Robb’s voice echo about in my head. How upset he sounded, like he couldn’t even imagine--

Like I’d betrayed him just by going--

“Aye,” Jon said to me softly. “Could drive a man mad trying to honor all those things at once.” And then, easily, like he’d plucked the thought from my mind, “And for you, it’s always duty.”

My knuckles were white. “Aye,” I whispered. Feeling rather wounded, even though it was true.

“That’s not why I love you,” Jon said into my hair. He pressed his chin to the top of my head, then pressed his cheek. “I love you because _nothing_ could ever make me stop. I knew you when I married you, Arya, at the shittiest, most crowded riverbank in Braavos. Valar Dohaeris,” he told me gently. “All men must serve. Gods, it’s like they wrote it with you in mind. It’s like they read it right off your heart.”

“You didn’t _let_ anything happen,” he added firmly. “You did your duty until the damn end. And I’m proud of you for that, no matter what.”

His hands held me tightly. “One of us has got to put that first, or we’d be worse than wild animals,” he said to me. “So I’m proud it’s you. Because,” he added rawly, “I don’t give a damn about duty anymore.”

I shut my eyes and held him back as tightly as I could. So lucky--I was still so lucky.

“So just let me,” Jon sighed out. My dearest man. “Just let me, alright? Let me worry about my family, and you worry about our duty, and we’ll manage it together in the end.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's, uh, been a while guys. Like two months about? I wanna just thank all of you who ever commented (especially the ones I didn't respond to, oh my God I'm so sorry to leave you hanging!!), kudos, bookmarked, opened then immediately exited out of, and read this story. You're all so fantastic and a huge part of me keeping up my enthusiasm about this fic. <333
> 
> If any of you wanna chat about the story, point out a horrible misspelling or grammar mistake, talk about the ship, or just chat in general please feel free to drop a comment (I promise to respond! I swear!) or email me at ao3throwaway27@gmail.com
> 
> Thanks for bearing with me and thanks again for reading. I hope you all stay safe and healthy in these trying times! <3333


	15. Chapter 15

By the time we managed to haul ourselves out of those ancient white roots, I felt easier. Soothed, as thoroughly sick as I was of people and brothers and sadness and war. _Give me ghosts any day_ , I thought aggressively. _They at least make sense_.

Jon was picking leaf detritus out of his hair. “Dearheart—” he said, trying to work through the curls on the back of his head.

“Aye, come here,” I told him, loving him so strongly that I thought it might make me ill. I fished a handful of twigs out of his mess of curls and took my kiss in return with a sigh.

“Would that we could stay here forever,” Jon said, and took my hand in his. He smiled at me, and it would have been impossible not to smile back. My earlier melancholy was lifting. He loved me. He’d always love me. Let Robb’s good opinion rot in the face of that.

“Alas,” I said back and pressed my forehead to Jon’s shoulder. “Real life—”

“Real _death_ ,” Jon corrected me with a snort, winding his arms around my waist.

“Aye, alright, real death gets in the way. I’ve had a grand time—we got rather harassed in the Great Hall—but I must say that Jeyne didn’t seem in favor of it. Sansa’s got the poor dear all penned up in her solar and I’m willing to wager the interrogation is over by now.”

“Sansa,” Jon said into my hair, “should have worked for Tyrion and Lady Cersei during the war. There’s just something about the tea—”

“—and the mild looks—”

“—gods, and the way she pats your hand—”

“—that makes you spill your guts,” we said together. _Don’t tell Sansa_ was more a prayer for strength than a personal edict at this point.

“It’s that damn Tyrell girl,” I muttered sourly. “Been a bad influence on her.”

Jon laughed. He gave me a squeeze and asked, “Once more into the breach?”

“Oh,” I sighed back. “If we _must_.”

“Could always head off to the Rock,” Jon said, and swayed us around, dancing to some bit of music trapped in his head. I looped my arms around his neck obligingly and let him waltz me as he hummed.

“And let Winterfell go to the dogs? Hardly, darling.”

“Why not?” Jon teased. “The dogs seem to be enjoying themselves. Just take a look at them, dearheart.”

I obligingly turned my head a little and watched Ghost chase Nymeria through the trees. Jon took the opportunity to lean in close and whisper right into my ear, “We could go enjoy ourselves, too…”

The kiss he put on my neck could have boiled water, it was so hot. “You wretch,” I cried, and put my hands on his chest to push him away. He caught them up, laughing.

“No?” he asked earnestly.

“Well, not now! Gods be good, it’s in the middle of the damn day,” I laughed, and slapped at him. “You let me go right now, you absolute knave. We have things that we have to do.”

Jon finally let me go, and tucked a strand of my hair back behind my ear. “Maybe later,” he said, eyes crinkled.

I was hardly going to discount the whole idea out of hand. “Mayhap,” I lied, for all the good it did me. I knew what he heard was closer to the truth, which may as well have been a straight up, _Yes, please, put it in your calendar book_. “But first!” I warned when he grinned at me, “We ought to do our part in keeping the old pile standing.”

“Work, work, and no play,” Jon said as he slipped his fingers through mine and swung our joined hands. “Lead the way, dearheart. I’m at your service.”

Just to be safe, I took the busiest way up to Sansa’s solar. Ghosts weren’t the only things tempted by dark and dusty corners and I was, after all, only a woman and hardly one of those grand old iron bastions of self-denial at that.

When I crashed my fist cheerfully into the solar door there was no answer. “Hmm,” I said and swung it open myself. The fire had been banked, the tea things were tucked away neatly in their little cubby on the shelves, and there was a big piece of paper sitting on the table by the sofa.

“Have we,” I said with a growing sense of outrage, “been _ditched_?”

Jon strolled across the room and picked up the note. “Aye,” he said after a moment, laughing, “Aye, we have. Apparently a slow meander is not a quick enough arrival for Lady Sansa.” He looked a little charmed as he scanned the page—Jon had a fine appreciation for punctuality that Sansa had not previously shared.

“She says Lady Jeyne has bedded down for a much needed rest, she—Sansa—must finish decorating the Great Hall, roses are now outlawed from any room in the keep, and if you go disturb her before the decorations are finished she will do something unspeakable to your dress.”

I huffed. “But she’s the only one who knows what’s going on!”

“Aye, well, she’s also decided she’s keeping to her own schedule,” Jon said and tossed the paper aside. “We’ll have to petition for an audience after dinner.”

“If she had only told me yesterday—” I cried.

“Waiting a little longer will hardly kill you,” Jon said to me easily. His hand took my elbow and steered me out of the room. “Besides, it’s nearly dark now. Won’t we need to dress for dinner soon?”

“It is not!” I protested. “It’s hardly even afternoon.”

But as we passed into one of the covered walkways I could see that Jon was indeed speaking true. The sky was washed all orange and gold and the light was starting to fade away. “How late exactly was our start today?” I demanded as we proceeded along.

“Did you really not check the clock?” Jon asked me. “We rose well on the far side of noon, dearheart.”

“Horrible,” I told him. “Absolutely horrible. Almost a whole day wasted and we’re no closer to solving our little conundrum.”

“Oh but look at the bright side,” Jon said dryly as he swept me through the door into our own rooms. “It’s been a long time since I last risked breaking a tooth on a large silver coin I won’t even get to keep and I can’t wait to enjoy the experience again.”

Normally I was one to enjoy the shenanigans surrounding Seven Nights—those lauded seven days when the normal world turned itself on its head under the decree of the Seven Who Were One. But now the thought of Father’s Night being just tomorrow filled me with dread.

“We shall get nothing done tomorrow either,” I said sourly as I threw myself down to sprawl across the counterpane. “Everyone will think we are fooling about in the usual manner if we go harping on about ghosts and all.”

“We’ll manage it,” Jon said as he shut the door and peeled off his coat. “We’ve managed worse.”

He came and knelt down before me to work off my shoes. I sighed happily as he tugged them off and threw an arm across my eyes. “I’m sure we have,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean I particularly want to try and convince the Lady Jeyne that—present time of year aside—she is indeed being haunted and I am indeed attempting to mitigate the situation.”

“Aye?” Jon asked as he stood and went rattling about the room.

“Yes, it will be a tremendous waste of effort and time,” I muttered as I scooted myself further back up the mattress and sprawled out.

There was a thoughtful pause.

“Well,” Jon said warmly, “you know how much I hate wasting time.”

Gently, he removed the arm from across my face and lay down on top of me, propping himself up with an arm of his own.

“Do you now,” I said dryly as I spread my legs a little so he could lie closer in the cradle of them.

“Oh, aye,” Jon told me with a practiced, earnest look. “Nothing bothers me more. Having an hour or two we could spend idle positively makes my teeth grind.” He grinned charmingly as he wormed a hand under my back and found the thin, delicate lacing on my dress.

He was _very_ warm but with this matter at hand I was hardly cold-blooded myself.

I _had_ said later. And if Sansa wasn’t going to see us at the moment—

“Well, if it vexes you that much then I suppose you had better do something about it,” I told Jon and put my hands in his hair.

Matters duly proceeded and we were in a delicate state—myself considerably moreso than Jon, damn all the tiny buttons men’s shirts and vests seemed to favor—when someone I would have dearly loved to kill slammed the bedroom door open, shouting out, “Now look here, Arya, don’t you think—”

I shrieked. Robb shrieked. Jon surged up with a look of alarm and shouted furiously, “Does nobody knock anymore!”

The door slammed shut again.

I covered my face with my hands. I’d had sunburns that left my cheeks burning to a lesser degree than three seconds in Robb’s unexpected company left them now.

“We are going straight to the Rock,” I told my palms. “Do not bother packing our things—I shall gladly give them all up if it means we can crawl out a window and make our escape.”

Jon pressed his face back between my breasts and groaned into my skin. “I’m going to take him down to the yard,” he threatened, “and I’m going to thrash the hide right off of him.”

“Take his tongue, too,” I suggested. “That way he can hardly tell anyone about what just happened.”

A voice, extremely irritated— _oh, like he had any right to be_ , I thought angrily—said loudly through the door, “You two had better be getting yourselves decent in there!”

“The Rock,” I told Jon again miserably. “Let the dogs have Winterfell. Let the _ghost_ have Winterfell. It is the very least Robb deserves.”

Jon grunted and heaved himself up. The only consolingly thought I could consider was that at least I didn’t have to face the matter by myself, and Jon could probably outshout Robb at this point. All the practice sergeanting before the war broke out and they stuck him up to captaining would finally pay off.

“If you don’t come out—” Robb threatened from the solar, “—I will be forced to come in!”

“Aye, try it!” Jon snarled back. “You come back into this room again for _any_ godsdamned reason, it’ll be the last thing you ever do!”

I briefly considered smothering myself and letting two wailing ghosts haunt Winterfell.

There was the distinct sound of something smashing in the room beyond. Hopefully it was Robb’s sense of outrage, or even his desire to, oh gods, talk about what just happened.

“We might as well straighten ourselves up,” Jon said, back tense as he raked his hands through his hair. “I wouldn’t put it past him to try and knock the door down.”

“Because he’s an arse?” I asked tiredly as I struggled to sit up. “An arse who’s been hit about the head too many times and has no sense of boundaries?”

“Because he just saw me despoiling his sister,” Jon said flatly.

There was something about his tone, about the hard lines of his bare shoulders—

“Because he just saw you kissing your wife,” I corrected lightly, testingly, as I tried to tug the neck of my dress into a less exposing position.

“Aye,” Jon said in that same flat tone which told me he actually meant, _No_.

_Oh gods_ , I thought, _will I ever be done making this man sacrifice things for my sake?_ Jon hardly cared who knew indeed, the damn liar!

“You’re more than welcome to disillusion him towards the matter,” I said softly and collapsed back onto the bed. The thought of anyone else knowing about the matter made me want to crawl into a hole and die.

But Jon looked so unhappy, like it was so important to him that Robb knew the real score—

“In fact,” I said bravely, “you go do so now, and I will stay here and possibly never leave this room again. Open a window before you leave, we shall let nature take its course, and you may place my desiccated body in the crypts afterwards.”

Jon laughed. “What?” he said, turning around, his shoulders softening. “What?”

“Go tell that thing that we are officially a _we_ ,” I said mournfully. “And I will simply stay here and die.”

Jon’s mouth was very soft as he took my hand and kissed my wrist. “My lady,” he said to me, “my very nearest and dearest lady, are you proposing I go tell Robb that you are _my_ lady and no other’s?”

“Oh you want to,” I said and turned my burning face away so I didn’t have to see anymore how sweet and lovely his eyes were.

“Aye,” Jon admitted after a moment and kissed my palm.

“Then you go speak,” I said, “and I will stay here and desiccate to an appropriate degree.”

Jon paused instead of springing up from the bed. He put my hand to his chest, to my favorite scar, and as he held my palm there I manfully tried to ignore the bite mark I had put next to it not five minutes prior.

“Shall I bring you enough sheets than you could mummify as well?” he asked and I could hear the smile in his voice. After another moment’s pause he said musingly, “You’re not ready yet.”

“It hardly matters,” I told the snow falling outside the window. “I let it slip to Bran earlier when I wasn’t paying attention, and Sansa knows too. You might as well tell Robb. I know how much you want to.”

His heartbeat was strong and calm. “I want to,” he said slowly. “I want him to stop implying I’m taking advantage of you when it was six months hard work convincing you to marry me. I want him to get it through his thick skull that I am the luckiest man in the world. But I won’t, dearheart. You’re not ready yet.”

“Aye,” I said a little sourly. “And eventually this marriage will crumble under the sheer unbalanced weight of you trying to see to my needs and not taking anything in return.”

I felt his chest hitch a little, but he huffed out a laugh. “You didn’t seem to mind me seeing to your needs earlier,” Jon told me slyly, looking positively wolfish.

I felt a sense of outrage gather and grow. “That,” I snapped, “is different.” I attempted to sit up again but he put his hand over my collarbone and pressed me back down easily and held me there.

“A little,” Jon said, grinning at me. “But not so much as you think. What was your favorite phrase in Pentos, dearheart? Quid pro quo?”

I felt myself redden further. “Aye,” I muttered. “And I quidded plenty of your quos, you wretch. That has no bearing either.”

“It does a little,” he said. “We’re a turn for turn kind of people, dearheart. And now’s my turn to quid.” He kissed me slowly. When he pulled away he was more somber.

“It’s still hurting you,” he told me softly. “Don’t think I can’t tell. You can hardly look at your mother without me seeing it in your face. And me telling Robb would be satisfying, aye, but when he doesn’t keep it to himself it’ll just hurt you more.”

“I’m so damned tired of feeling delicate all the time,” I said back, falling into truthfulness. The man had seen me at my worst, he could hardly think any less of me now. “But aye,” I whispered, “I think it would. Hurt me. It’s not, it’s none of their business.”

“Not yet anyway,” Jon agreed. “And I can wait, dearheart, until it is.”

He paused, consideringly, and added, “So long as we start remembering to lock the door.”

I snorted. “And,” Jon said, leaning down to speak into the soft skin of my chest again, “so long as you continue to occasionally quid my quo.”

The bite he gave me was just on the right side of hurting, and almost—not quite, but damn close to—good enough to make me forget about Robb standing on the other side of the gods damned door.

“You’re horrible,” I said, and used my hand on Jon’s chest to lever him away. “That’s hardly a nice way to treat your lady.”

“Mayhap not,” Jon agreed, and let himself tumble off of me and back onto the mattress. He stretched out in a lean handsome line and propped himself up with an elbow. “Tell me, my lady,” he said, grinning, “however shall I make it up to you?”

“Do my laces back up,” I said and let him help me upright. “And suffer loyally at my side through the most awkward conversation we shall ever have.”

“Gladly,” Jon told me, and kissed my shoulder. He made quick work of the laces, which was no surprise at all considering how often the dear man was undressing me.

Afterwards I sank down at my vanity to undo the knotted mess of my hair and Jon redid the numerous buttons on his shirt. “You’ve misbuttoned that,” I said, watching him in the mirror.

“I always do,” he sighed back. “Lucky enough my lady is clever, and fixes it.”

“Oh, let it be,” I said and tossed my hairbrush down as I stood. “Let all of it be—Robb can hardly pretend now not to have heard the rumors.”

“Mm,” Jon said. “Positively scandalous, I heard.” He looped his arm through mine obligingly. “What was it that your dear Aunt Lysa wrote to you?”

The humor remained even after a good half a year had passed since he had read the missive to me. “That I am positively a blight on the good Tully name,” I said and snickered. “As if she herself wasn’t in the society papers just before she sent it, under heavy suspicion of gadding about with Littlefinger. And at her tender age of being an undivorced wife and mother old!”

“Hardly comparable,” Jon teased me. “A single young lady falling under the thrall of a handsome wolf is far better than a mother finding a worm in her garden and inviting it in for tea.”

“Hardly,” I agreed with a laugh, and leant against him. “Go on, then. Open the door. My loins are as girded as they are going to get.”

“Aye, well, mine have disappeared in the face of our inevitably chilling reception,” Jon said.

“Your gird?”

“My _loins_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a sweet little interlude. There will be a Robb resolution next chapter!
> 
> On a side note, just a quick gauge in interest: more weird AUs? Sexy undercover heist in Lys? Slow-burn courtship masquerading as Spring cleaning of Winterfell? Thoughts or preferences much welcome!
> 
> Stay safe friends <333


	16. Chapter 16

Robb was looming near one of the hearths, a glass of something no doubt alcoholic in his hand. He scowled at us as Jon settled me on the sofa and the angry look only increased as Jon sat so close next to me that our legs were touching.

“Well?” Jon demanded as he slung an arm across the back of the sofa. “Get on with it then.”

“I ought to have you hung off the battlements,” Robb said and drained the rest of his glass.

I was, I’ll admit, very tense at this point. There had been more than a few pissing matches between Robb and Jon when they were younger, but those had been mostly friendly. I had the sense now that there was going to be more vitriol than laughter in this one.

“By your _toes_ ,” Robb added viciously and slammed his glass down on the mantelpiece. There was a distinctive glittering on the hearth rug, and I realized slowly that was the smashing noise we had heard earlier.

Jon’s fingers swept across my neck and gathered up a lock of hair. He gave it a tug—a silent _Have heart_ —and I leaned back until he could cup my neck reassuringly.

“If this is you trying to read us the riot act—” I drawled and Robb jabbed a finger in my direction.

“If I wanted to give you a riot act, I would have dragged Mother up here!” he shouted. “And you’re damn well lucky I didn’t! It’s one thing to go about flaunting your _dalliance_ in Dorne, but you’re back in the North now! There are consequences for that sort of thing here!”

“Strange,” Jon commented lightly. “I’d have thought that would make the papers.”

“What, your return?” Robb demanded. “Or whatever sordid affair—”

“Making fucking illegal,” Jon said flatly. “Seems an odd choice with winter just now settling in. I can’t imagine anyone was pleased.”

Robb gave Jon a cold look. “Still have a godsdamned smart mouth,” he said angrily.

“Aye,” Jon lobbed back, “and you still can’t mind your own fucking business. Guess which one’ll get a body farther in life.”

_Gods give me strength_ , I thought. “Robb,” I said loudly over whatever sarcastic volley the two were brewing up next, “you _didn’t_ call Mother up here. So, unless you intend to shame us on your own, what exactly do you want?”

Robb grit his teeth. “I came up to finish our conversation,” he said. “I thought we could actually clear the air and end it on a better note this time than you running off.” His following look said he no longer had this expectation.

Jon went still next to me, like a hunting hound just scenting its prey. “Really,” he said in a dangerous voice. “That was you earlier?”

“ _What_ was me earlier?” Robb demanded, belligerent and furious.

There was nothing for it—if we went about the matter like that, we’d spend all night shouting ourselves in circles. I pinched Jon’s thigh, hard— _Focus, damn you_ —and he redirected himself with heavy sarcasm.

“Aye, fine” Jon said. “We’ll talk later about how exactly you refuse to leave my lady alone. For now, let’s focus on your other lapses in manners.”

Robb made a gruesome face. “My—” he began.

“Mayhap it’s just my own worldly ways speaking,” Jon said loudly over him, “but here I am thinking knocking first was the mode du jour for entering rooms not your own. Was that too hard for you to remember?” he demanded meanly. “Should we put up a sign?”

“It’d be better if you locked the damn door!” Robb snapped. “Or, hell, what an idea! Pick a different room for yourself! There’s about a hundred of them here! Show some fucking restraint for seven godsdamned nights and then go back to a place where people don’t care about decency!”

And now I had a better idea as to why Jon was suddenly eager to inform Robb of our marriage. “For a boy who spent his childhood kneeling in front of a heart tree,” I said furiously, “you have an odd idea of what’s _indecent_. Mayhap you had better spend less time in the sept, Lord Stark.”

Robb grabbed at his hair until it stood on end. “Ha! Calling me lord! Mayhap you had better act like a lady yourself!” he cried. “What would Mother say if she knew—”

“Mother,” I said coldly, “put us in this room, Mother doesn’t get an opinion on what we do in it, and Mother raised you to _knock_!”

“Aye,” Jon agreed. He stroked my neck softly. “She hardly grew you up in a barn—prissy little thing that you were. You had to be harassed into leaving the library and going outside.”

“No,” Jon went on after a moment. Some of the ire went out of him. He looked at Robb for a long moment. “Not a barn. You were never really fond of horses and riding.”

Some of the steam went out of Robb in return. “No,” he agreed. “That was always you damn two. We had to practically pry you out of the stables sometimes.” Something changed in his face. I watched him soften a little, the harsh look of condemnation leaching out of his eyes. When he staggered across the room and into an armchair, he looked nearly subdued.

He stared at us for a long moment, then heaved an enormous sigh.

“Mayhap we can start again,” he said quietly. “Do this over. I didn’t come here wanting to fight with either of you.”

I felt again that same dizzy, temporal sense of vertigo. Gods, Robb was old now. Gods, _we_ were old now. It seemed stupid, as adults, to sit in someone’s solar sniping at each other when we could be doing literally anything else instead.

“Fine,” Jon said. His eyes were a little tight—I knew his relationship with Robb was strained now, and that sometimes Jon missed him. Missed how it had been before the war. “We’ll be adults about it,” Jon went on.

“Yes,” I agreed readily. “We shall pretend to be adults. Go on, assume you knocked and all that rot.” I folded my hands together neatly and pasted on a mild, interested mien. “So good of you to come visit us, Robb,” I simpered. “If it’s not too indelicate to ask—whatever brings you here? What can we do for you?”

“Aye,” Jon said with slow amusement. “We live to serve.”

“Oh, but first,” I went on, like a fluttering little bird, “may I offer you some refreshments? Tea? Liquor? Oh, it looks like you’ve already helped yourself!”

Robb put his head in his hands and laughed against his will. “You can start,” he said to me, “but not being Sansa. It doesn’t suit you, Wild Arya Underfoot.”

“Aye, alright, that’s fair,” I admitted and relaxed back into my seat. “Truly, Robb. What brought you here when you knew you’d hardly be in charity with either of us? If it wasn’t to shout and get shouted at some more, you had to have a plan beyond picking up where we left off.”

“I thought I’d try an attempt to get back into charity,” Robb said. “I didn’t— I didn’t want to leave it like that between us. I didn’t want that during the war when you two went off, and I don’t want it now.”

“We’re family,” he added a little rawly. He looked half a mad man with his hair all sticking up and his face still red. There was nothing polished, nothing faked about. “It’s not right to be so brutish to each other. To speak so meanly.”

He heaved a sigh and said, “It’s not right for _me_ to speak so meanly when I clearly don’t understand what either of you went through.”

I raised both my eyebrows and shot a look at Jon. He was staring at Robb, surprised, but I thought he wasn’t unwilling to listen.

“I’m sorry,” Robb went on.

It was a fine start. We couldn’t keep going on all-over pins and needles followed by large explosions. We’d be bigger fools than we were not to take it. Jon raised an eyebrow at me that asked, _Good enough for you?_

_My_ wheelhouse had just been firmly established as duty, so I tucked my feet up under myself and shot Jon a look back, one that said clearly, _Here’s your chance to have a starring role. You make amends, please, and I will amuse myself with other things_.

Jon’s look back said, _You are an incorrigible little chit_. But he said to Robb, trying at it himself, “That’s a far better apology than the one you gave me before.”

“Aye,” Robb said. He scuffed his hands through his hair again, nervously. “Aye, I’ve been remiss. My wife made that clear to me.”

“You’ve always had a smart mouth,” Robb went on. “And I’ve—”

“—always had a temper,” Jon finished. “I’m glad, Robb, that Jeyne helps you with that.”

“She makes me want to help myself,” Robb told him plainly. That same, slightly stupid, very besotted look was creeping in again. It was, I decided, a far better change than angrily insolence. “It’s no less than she deserves.”

“Mayhap I know a little about that,” Jon said and tucked me up against his side. I went willingly, putting my head on Jon’s shoulder, and this time Robb didn’t look like he wanted to shove a chaperone between us.

“I suppose you do,” he told Jon. “You damn two. Gods.” He put his head back in his hands and said, muffled, “Cut from the same cloth. Suppose I should have expected the war to just make you closer.”

“Aye,” Jon said quietly. “It did.”

They shared a look—something intense—and Robb looked away first, nodding.

“Suppose you didn’t have a choice,” he said. “After Mother sent that letter. Should have known you two would start freezing everyone out. You were always the type to circle the wagons, Jon.”

“I don’t know what Mother wrote, Arya,” Robb went on hesitantly, “but if she threw my name in there—”

“Oh,” I said nervously. Always back to the titular elephant in the room. It positively _haunted_ us. “You didn’t know? You didn’t— You didn’t read it?”

“She told us after she sent it,” Robb said roughly. “The gist. She was cutting you off. We weren’t to write anymore until you came to your senses. Aye, that’s all she told me, and I broke the vase on her mantel when she did.”

“Suppose she thought it’d make you come home,” Robb went on tiredly. “Cow you a little bit.” He clearly wasn’t endorsing it, not even trying to explain the matter. Just adding in what he thought.

“Aye, well, suppose it didn’t work,” Jon said. He stroked my hair a little. “Caused a lot of trouble for us, though.”

I supposed myself, now that I was thinking about it, that poor Robb couldn’t really have anything to do with it—his letters had been full of brash threats and furious summons until Ny Sar—but never once had he actually stopped writing.

No, Robb had never been the type for cold silences. He was much more likely to shout the roof down.

“There was hardly anything shocking in it,” I said lightly. “It was just the standard disowning, you know. Lots of goings on about my disrespect towards my family. You’re not a Stark, you’re not my daughter, expect no further financial support until you’re ready to come home, I’m ashamed of you and your choices. All—” I winced as my voice broke. “All that rot.”

“I’d imagine,” Robb muttered. “And there I was, being a total cock, and adding to it. Agreeing with it. I’m sorry,” he said again. “And that’s for the both of you. I don’t agree with what you did, Arya, but I want you to know that I respect you for it. For helping our people. For doing what I couldn’t.”

“Yes,” I said, and cleared my throat to get rid of the ache there. “Yes, yes, apology accepted. You, ah, did your part, too, I suppose. In King’s Landing.”

“What,” Robb said softly, “jawing a bunch of old asses into submission? Forcing some funding? It was hardly troublesome.”

“No, I imagine you brought the trouble in with you,” Jon said. His voice was lighter now, friendly. Almost conspiratorial. “Couldn’t go around with a deficit of the stuff, not the Robb I know. Bet you a dragon you stirred up some scandals.”

Robb laughed. “Aye,” he said. “Aye. I’ll take a free dragon off your hands any day.” He shoved his hands through his hair a final time. “Gods I’ve missed you, brother,” he said. “Bran’s well and good company, and Rickon too, but they aren’t you.”

“I missed you, too,” Jon said plainly. They were smiling at each other now. Hesitantly, yes, but there all the same.

I can’t say as to what inspired me to do it. The apologies, maybe, which were as sincere as they were rough. The familiar look they shared—a connection that even the angriest words couldn’t have undone. Robb’s face, when he said he respected me.

But I prised myself out of Jon’s hold and went over to the little drink table.

There wasn’t any champagne, but the three of us were hardly fans of the stuff anyway. “He is, you know,” I said as I poured out three healthy doses of brandy.

“Is what?” Robb asked, taking his glass as I passed it over.

Jon knew. The dear man always seemed to know what I was doing. There was a smile breaking out on his face. “Arya!” he said, laughing, and shook his head. I let him put his hand on my waist, but didn’t let him help me down next to him again.

“Consider this knowledge a holiday gift,” I told Robb lightly. “Wasn’t that always your wish for Smith’s Night? For Jon to be your brother for real?”

I climbed onto Jon’s lap and perched myself there. “Because he is now,” I told Robb as I passed Jon his glass. The dear man was laughing into my hair, sounding so deeply amused and happy. “Legally, spiritually, all that official rot. Has been,” I said mischievously, looking at Jon as I wound an arm around his neck, “for how many years now, darling?”

“Four,” Jon said, and kissed me through his laughter. When I pulled away, a hand still in his hair, his eyes were shining more brilliantly than the stars.

“What?” Robb demanded, caught on a swallow. “What!”

“You’re welcome,” I went on, having a great deal of fun as Robb coughed up his brandy.

“You aren’t serious!” he cried when he was done choking.

Jon started laughing all the harder.

Robb stared at us in disbelief, then put his glass on the floor. From the cover of his hands on his face, he shouted, “You _damned_ two!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally a Robb resolution! After, yikes, almost two months away from this piece, it's nice to sink back into a chatty opinionated first-person Arya. I have been frantically hammering away at something for a Jon/Arya ship event but now that I'm in the editing stages on that, I had time to wrap this chapter up.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it! Thank you always for reading/kudos/bookmarks/comments, and I hope this made you laugh a little in these dark times.
> 
> Stay safe, readers!


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